Surfing the Bardo
by stefanie bean
Summary: After Kate and Claire return from the Island, Claire gets to know Aaron while she and Hugo explore their growing feelings for one another. Meanwhile, Kate works through her grief over Jack. And while things start out rough, they do get better. (TW: mental health issues, trauma, suicidal thoughts. Past Jack/Kate, Hurley/Claire, some Kate/Sawyer. Not FSW or epilogue compliant)
1. Safe House 1

**Chapter 1: Safe House (Part 1)**

On a warm June evening, Hugo sped up Tuna Canyon Road in high gear. Man oh man, nothing beat a Hummer for eating up the miles. Eight under the hood, six on the floor, pedal to the metal, baby.

Hard to believe that six months had passed since he had taken over as protector of the Island. Mostly it was pretty cool, even if he didn't get to sleep in as much as he liked. It was good to be back in LA, though, cruising on a twisty two-lane road at sixty miles an hour, evening sunlight brushing the western edges of mountains so vast they seemed to go on forever.

Hugo flipped open his phone and tapped the key for Claire's number, first on the list.

"This is Claire. If you hear this message, we're out catching falling stars. Bye for now." A few bars of "Catch a Falling Star" followed, then the beep. Hugo hung up without leaving a message.

He tried the fourth, which was the house number, and heard Kate's clipped, serious voice. "Under California state law, this is your notification that this call is being recorded, as well as your originating call number or your Internet service provider. To leave a text, press one. For media inquiries, press two. For our attorneys, press three. For all other matters, please take a long swim off a short pier. Have a nice day."

Hugo sighed. The intimidating message served to scare away the few journalists, paparazzi, and publicity hounds who still pursued "Ajira Aaron and his Two Mommies," as some tabloid had called them. The label stuck.

He tried to recall the speed-dial code for Kate's personal cell number. Third time was the charm, right? Just as he was sneaking a downward peek at his phone, a truck careened down the opposite lane towards the Pacific Coast Highway. When the truck swept a little too close for comfort, Hugo jerked out of the way, and fixed his eyes on the road. He might be the luckiest guy in the world, but best not to push it.

Might as well try number eight, see if that worked. It did. Kate answered after four rings, her voice polite but distant. "Hello, Hurley."

"Hey, Kate. Just wanted to let you know I'm on my way."

"Thanks. See you." She hung up.

Hugo almost missed the turn for Antelope Ridge Drive, which wasn't much of one. More like gravel doing a tap-dance on a hard-pan path which skirted around the ravine. Approaching night turned the thick cedars purple, and across the canyon a coyote yipped, answered by another one.

The drive ended in an open security gate topped with a "No Trespassing" sign. He proceeded at a crawl up the long driveway, until he came to a boxy ranch house nestled in the evening shadows. Light from the newly-risen moon glinted on its flat roof.

Why was the house so dark? Hugo pulled over, debating whether to get out or call Kate again, when the patio light came on. A slender figure stepped out onto the porch, her halo of short, fluffy hair lit from behind.

Hugo stepped into the pool of brightness and waved. "Claire, hey there."

"Hi, Hurley."

He didn't even have to ask for the hug. In a breathless moment she drew him towards her, coming to rest soft and pliant in his arms. When a footstep on the patio made her turn around, she let him go with a look that was almost guilty.

Two silhouettes appeared in the doorway: a taller woman, holding a small child by the hand. Kate, and Aaron.

"Come on in, Hurley," Kate said.

The first thing Hugo noticed about the living room was that there were plants everywhere. Tropical plants, all in pots that ranged from big to ginormous. Some of the trees reached to the large, unshuttered skylight. There was a long overstuffed couch, as well as cushions on the floor, jumbled in front of a wide, flat-screened television.

Kate gave him the once-over, as if silently measuring. "You're looking good, Hurley. Been working out?"

"Nope, just going about my business." Just walking up and down mountains, chopping wood, mucking out cisterns. Digging for broken electrical cables if the power went out. Building canoes and outriggers, jacking up cars by hand. No gym needed, living the way he did. He was still fat as ever, probably always would be. But now there was steel underneath.

"How about a beer?"

Hugo shook his head. "Nah, I'm good."

"I'll have one," Claire piped up.

"No, honey, you can't. Meds, remember?"

Claire pouted like a stubborn child. "I hate meds."

Hugo studied Claire carefully, her face shadowed in the living room's low light. A lot had changed since she had returned from the Island, and he wondered if she knew how far she'd come. "Hey, take it from me. If you need them, you need them."

Her long, careful look seemed to bookmark his words for a later conversation. She then turned to Kate. "Where's Mum?"

"Tonight's her coma meeting, remember?"

"How can I remember anything? These pills stuff my head with cotton. And they're making me fat."

Hugo knew how meds could strap leaden weights to your thoughts and limbs alike. How you could sleep twelve, fourteen hours out of twenty-four. And above all, pack on the pounds.

But Claire, fat? He snuck a casual glance, trying not to be obvious. Yeah, she might have had a bit of a point, although this softer, fuller Claire was a big improvement over the starving scarecrow she had been. "No way you're fat."

"Hah." Claire plopped down on a cushion. "You're just saying that."

Aaron pulled on the collar of his Dora the Explorer pajamas and stared straight up at Hugo.

"Do you remember Mr. Reyes?" Kate said.

"Hey, you can call me Hurley. Mr. Reyes is my dad."

As Kate shot Hugo a disapproving look, Aaron piped up, "Horsie ride!"

Of course Aaron would remember that. Kids on the Island loved to sit on Hugo's shoulders as he raced around. However, they also liked to cling to his long mane for dear life, which usually meant he gave up some hair. Aaron had been no exception.

Immediately after a broken and battered Ajira 316 had rolled into Herarat Airlines' hanger, Richard had bundled Kate and Claire off to their first safe house, an apartment in Manhattan Beach. Hugo had visited shortly after, and had carried Aaron to and fro while Kate tried to coax Claire into sitting on the sofa instead of cowering behind it. _He_ was coming for her, she insisted. Finally Kate got her to sit with a cup of tea in hand. It had felt like a huge victory at the time.

"Can I have horsie ride now?"

Kate swooped over. "Sorry, Goober, it's bedtime. Maybe tomorrow, if it's all right with Hurley. Claire, your turn to tuck Aaron in tonight."

Claire fought a wide yawn. "But I just sat down."

Kate was about to insist, when Aaron said to Hugo, "I live here now."

"He's had to move three times in six months," Kate explained, with a touch of accusation.

"Three times?" Hugo said, trying to count internally. Oh, right. From Kate's house to Carole's motel, where Richard found them and brought them to the Manhattan Beach apartment. But they couldn't stay there long, not with all the publicity about "Ajira Aaron." That's how they wound up at the end of the road above Tuna Canyon.

Aaron was still focused on Hugo. "Where do _you_ live?"

"Hurley lives far, far away," Claire said. "On an island."

Aaron's eyes grew wide. "On Monster Island? With Godzilla?"

"Nope, no Godzilla," Hugo said in a serious voice. "I checked pretty carefully."

"Oh." Disappointed, Aaron pulled on Claire's arm. "Mummy Claire, read Godzilla to me."

"I thought you wanted Mothra."

"Godzilla!" Aaron insisted. 

"We read Mothra last night," Kate explained.

Aaron swooped around the living room, flapping his arms like gigantic moth-wings. As Hugo helped Claire to her feet, her hair briefly brushed his chin, and she smelled of lavender. She tottered behind Aaron, swaying slightly.

After the bedroom door clicked shut, Kate said, "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to have that beer." She rummaged through a refrigerator big enough for two families. "How about pineapple juice?"

"Anything, Kate."

As she got the drinks, Hugo tried to not seem too interested in the sounds coming from Aaron's room: Claire's low, rhythmic voice with a slur he recognized from the hospital, broken by Aaron's excited yips.

His pineapple juice was poured over ice, and Kate had added a little green paper umbrella. He twirled it, suddenly shy about getting started. "So. How are you settling in?"

"Things are quiet up here. We must be moving out of the news cycle, I guess. It's still hard for Claire, though. The good thing is that Aaron's her rock. He keeps her tied to the earth, rather than floating right off it. But—"

"But?"

"But whatever these doctors think they're doing, she's in a stall. Not getting worse, but not getting better, either." She got up and headed for the cabinet. "I could put a splash of Captain Morgan in that pineapple juice if you wanted."

"Really, Kate, no booze for me, thanks."

She seated herself back down and took a long pull from her Heineken's. "We talked about pre-school, but Claire doesn't want to let him out of her sight. So we hold a little one of our own in the mornings. I do the reading and Claire paints with him. He's good, Hurley, really good for a kid his age. Neither of us quite have a handle on how to teach him numbers."

"That's gotta be, what? Adding and subtracting?"

"At his age, more like counting," she said with a fragile laugh. "We get frustrated, especially Claire. It doesn't take much to set her off on a long tirade about how worthless she is, what a terrible mother, all that. At least she doesn't say it in front of Aaron. But it builds up inside her."

"Like a volcano," Hugo said. He knew the feeling.

"Then at night when she can't sleep, when I'm dead on my feet, it all comes out." She started pacing again.

"Maybe you don't have to do it all alone, Kate." When she didn't pick up on his opening, he lost his nerve. He had been waiting to talk to them both, but Claire hadn't reappeared, so he tried another tack. "Aaron takes a long time to get to sleep, I guess."

"Come with me." Kate put her finger over her lips, signaling him to be quiet. In Aaron's room, half-dark in the night-light, mother and child were both asleep. Aaron curled up in his bed, while Claire sprawled half-in and out, her feet splayed in front of her. "She's almost impossible to wake up once she conks out like this," Kate whispered. "It's hard to get her to bed."

"Here, let me. Just lead the way." Hugo picked Claire up like a small doll. Her head lolled against his chest with a sweet weight, and once more he breathed in the fragrant scent of her hair. His heart started to pound, and to distract himself he looked around Claire's chaotic, up-ended room.

On the bed, clothes and blankets were lumped into a kind of nest with a hollowed-out center. Piles of books and papers spread out over the floor. Used tubes of paints and broken pastels crowded the desk and a work table, and art covered the walls.

The images of Kate and Aaron looked ordinary, happy almost. There were still life piles of fruit, or cut flowers. Then there were Claire's self-portraits, with their haunted, hollow eyes. In some pictures, a small solitary figure wandered under looming trees. The room jarred with the rest of the neat, mostly-bare house.

Hugo gently lowered Claire onto her bed. At first she half-clung to him, like she didn't want to let go, then rolled onto her side, still deeply asleep. He covered her with a thin cotton blanket.

Kate was waiting in the hallway. Hugo said, "You've done a great job, Kate."

Her eyes got bright and moist all at once. "I wish you didn't have to see that."

"I've seen worse. I've been worse."

"I know. I was there, remember?"

It was true. She had been, at his lowest point: she and Jack both. "Kate, there's something I wanted to talk to you about—"

She interrupted, as if he hadn't spoken at all. "Hey, let me make you a sandwich. Roast beef or turkey?"

"Turkey would be awesome. Don't get that at home."

"At home? Oh, you mean the Island." Kate stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. The gulf between them yawned for an instant, wide as the ocean which separated him from this ordinary LA life. Finally she said, "How long are you in town for?"

The routine question made everything feel normal again. Mostly. "Till tomorrow evening."

"Can you stay the night? We're using all the bedrooms, but I can bunk with Claire and let you have the big bed."

"The sofa's fine, Kate." His heart gave a little flip-flop of anticipation. It was more than he'd hoped for.

As Kate sliced turkey breast, she weighed her words carefully. "Claire's way better in the mornings, when she gets a pot of coffee in her." She set before him an excellent sandwich: crunchy sourdough bread, turkey with crisp skin still on it, garlic mayo and a few pickles.

Kate picked at her own little pile of roast beef, and her silence made Hugo nervous. He gestured towards the strange jungle-like living room, such a contrast with the open kitchen of metal and glass. "Why all the plants?"

"We rented them from a prop shop that supplies them for movie sets. They calm her down."

"Right." That was LA for you, Hugo thought. Something for everyone, if you had the cash. Well, no time like the present. "You know how my mom, Jack's mom, and me all started the Shephard Foundation a couple months ago?"

Pain passed across Kate's face. "Margo told me."

"Well, I bought, I mean, the foundation bought some property up in the mountains by Malibu Springs. An old retreat center. I think you guys might like it up there." His words tumbled out, trying to outpace any objections. "It's safe, Kate. I mean, really safe. The big house is nice. And there are cabins. For... visitors."

"Seems like we'd be exchanging one mountain top for another." The way she stated it, she wasn't impressed.

"It's kinda between Calabasas and Thousand Oaks, so you could find a school for Aaron. It's not like it's that remote."

"Sounds like a big place for just us."

This was the tricky part, and he hoped he didn't blow it. "A few Others keep the place running. And I kinda poached some staff from Santa Rosa who can—"

"Others?" Her sharp eyes focused like a drill. "Oh, no. Not them. No way."

"It just means people who live on the Island, Kate. Or who used to, but live here now. In our world, I mean. Or who go back and forth." Like him, he thought, who found themselves in between both places, yet not completely at home in either. "When you think of it, I'm an Other now."

That got her thinking a bit. She got up to pace, as if cornered. "I don't want to put Aaron through another move."

He gestured widely at the room, at the ranch house itself. "This is a safe house, Kate. It's not a place to live for good. It's made so that people can move around quickly." He struggled to find the right analogy. "Like a hotel. But you need... Claire and Aaron need a place to settle in. Maybe even put down some roots, now that things are starting to quiet down."

He could tell she was straining to believe him, but something held her back. "Did you talk to Sawyer?"

"He says he's gonna try his luck in the great Northwest for awhile."

Kate's laugh came out dry and sarcastic. "We'll see how long that lasts."

Hugo didn't contradict her, keeping to himself why Sawyer wanted to stay in Portland. _Never lower_ _a_ _bucket into a dry well, hoss_ , Sawyer had remarked when they last spoke. All Hugo said was, "Also, there's a stable. Needs a few horses in it, though."

Her eyes shone, but she didn't say anything.

"We'd need someone to run it." The words had barely left his mouth before he knew that he'd overplayed his hand.

Her shoulders suddenly grew stiff, and she let her fork fall to the table with a clatter. "You're offering me a _job_? So I guess this is how Jacob did it. Find out what they want, dangle the bait, then reel them in. That's how he conned Jack." She leaned over to Hugo, green fire in her eyes. "And now you're like Jacob. What mess do you need me to mop up? I bet it's not just mucking out a stable." Her laugh came out bitter and without humor. "You know, when you called, at first I thought you were going to ask me to go back."

"No way, Kate. Only if you want to. And you have to really want to."

"Don't try your reverse psychology on me."

Hugo knew she had to get it out. He only wished that the lash of her words didn't have to hurt so much. "This is about Claire. About her getting better. And you, too."

"Me, too? There's nothing wrong with me."

One thing about being a mental patient, you learned the lingo. "I'm no shrink, but I'm sensing some caregiver burnout here."

"Hurley..." She couldn't look at him. Her voice trailed to nothing as she leaned on the gleaming metal island for support, her anger bleeding off. "It's just that I miss him so badly. Tell me, Hurley, when am I going to stop missing him?"

Hugo came around the table, arms open. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then she fell against him. He patted her back in a slow rhythm. "I miss him too. Every day."

As he kept patting, her trembling stopped. When her body was relaxed and quiet, he lifted her chin. "You're so awesome, Kate. You're the sister I never had. You're like my mom. I mean, if you were my sister, you'd be like her. Because she'd be your mom too." He shook his head, embarrassed. Protecting the Island had changed him, for sure. But it hadn't fixed his clumsy, tripping tongue. "Man, that came out all wrong."

"No, it didn't," Kate said, smiling for the first time that evening. "It's a big compliment. And you're right, I'm not coping." She sat back down, all the fight gone out of her. "I'm glad you're staying the night."

"Me, too. Hey, got to text my parents before it gets too late." All thumbs, he fumbled with the phone, having never quite gotten the hang of it. "Stayng w/ Kt and Clr 2nite, c u at tmrw lnch." He flipped it shut, trying to squelch the smile that threatened to take over his whole face.

( _continued_ )

 **(A/N: Found and fixed a little timeline glitch.)**


	2. Safe House 2

**Chapter 2: Safe House (Part 2)**

June mornings in LA were deceptive, as Hugo knew. The mist hanging over the mountain tops might give everything a pearly cast, but by ten o'clock you could fry eggs on the concrete. And it was closer to ten than dawn.

Hugo found a little stale coffee left over from the night before. After heating it, he settled himself on the concrete patio by the pool, although he had no desire to swim. As he scanned the thick-treed canyon and the faint haze of Santa Monica to the south, Claire came out to join him.

She set down her steaming mug. "Fresh coffee if you want it. Don't know how you can drink that old stuff."

"You'd be amazed at what you could drink," he said, flustered.

He wished he hadn't said it when she lowered her head and said in a low voice, "I know."

Time to change the subject, before he put his foot in it further. Since there was no pool cover, a few stray leaves drifted on the surface of the blue water. "Does Aaron swim?"

Claire smiled, the first sunshine of that grey morning. "Like a fish. Maybe he remembers being on the Island."

Hugo nodded. Sometimes Claire and Charlie would take Aaron into the lagoon near the beach camp, after the hot sun had warmed the water to that of a comfortable bath. Cradled in four attentive hands, Aaron paddled like a puppy as his fat little arms and legs busily worked to stay afloat. Hugo had watched the three of them from a rocky overhang, then turned away as if he had seen something even more intimate than love-making, his chest aching with hurt.

The memory reminded him that you only lost if you didn't try. He started, only fumbling a little. "Claire, there's a place up near Malibu Springs, where, um—"

She cut him off. "Kate woke me up this morning, and we talked a little. Some kind of holiday camp, she made it sound like. And animals, like a farm. Not a hospital, though."

"Not a hospital," Hugo echoed.

"Kate said you were in one, twice. And for a long time. I didn't know that."

 _When did we ever get to talk?_ he asked silently.

"Was it dreadful?"

"Not Santa Rosa, no. The first place, that was another story."

She didn't say anything, just waited for him to tell her, or not. All at once he noticed that while Claire could have picked any chair around the patio table, she had chosen the one closest to him.

He started to speak, carried back to that day when everything changed.

His mom had told the EMTs that she "feared for his life," meaning that she had come home early from work that day and found him at the end of a massive binge. The evidence had been strewn all over the kitchen, and when she got hysterical about how he was "eating himself to death," it pushed him over the edge too. At LA County General, the nurses sent him right upstairs to the fifteenth floor as a "suicide risk."

When it dawned on him that he wouldn't be able to leave, he screamed at her, "Suicide? Are you kidding? Didn't you beat it into my head that suicide was a sin?" She had just looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.

The first day, they gave him a shot strong enough to drop an elephant, and he mostly slept. The second day, an attendant even bigger than him led him to a conference room, where his mom and a weary doctor were already seated around a scuffed table.

The beefy attendant positioned himself behind Hugo as the doctor picked up a phone and spoke into it. "Yes, Hugo is here."

Into the room walked a man, tall and grey like a skeleton, with sharp cheekbones. Hugo fought, then gave in to the giggle which rose up. "Hey, Grand Moff Tarkin, blow up any planets lately?"

Claire had been sitting quietly till now, but this made her pipe up. "You didn't!"

A few dragonflies buzzed the pool. Hugo glanced into the house, which was still silent. "You know who Grand Moff Tarkin is?"

"Of course I do. From _Star Wars._ "

Hugo could have hugged her, but didn't. Instead, he went on.

Tarkin sounded just like he did in the movie, British accent and all. He looked down his nose at the shrink, then leaned in very close to Hugo. "I've been over your file, Hugo, but I'd like to hear what happened in your own words. If you don't mind." When Carmen started to talk instead, Tarkin shushed her with a single icy glare.

Voice thick, Hugo said, "Mom came home from work, and—"

Tarkin waved him off. "Yes, yes, I know. Let's go back a few months before that, Hugo. To your cousin Rosa Garcia's _fiesta de quince años_ _."_ His pronunciation was perfect.

Despite the medications, cold fear pooled in Hugo's torso, turning into a ticking bomb of pure panic. Behind him, the attendant shifted a fraction, just enough to let him know he was still there.

"I know this is difficult, Hugo," Tarkin said in a surprisingly gentle voice. "Take your time."

The psychiatrist shifted impatiently, and Hugo could have sworn he said, _Easy for you to say_ , followed by the fleeting glimpse of a sea of patients, so many, and so little time for each one.

Slowly, hesitatingly, Hugo stammered out what had happened. Carrying Rosa's present, he had been looking all over for her, and the last place was on the deck. Laden with party-goers, it already creaked under their weight. Suddenly he stopped short, letting Rosa's present fall from his hands to the floor. Glass tinkled as the crystal unicorn statue inside broke.

There, at the far end of the deck, looking as if she belonged there, stood a short, stocky woman whose unruly grey-streaked curls sprang out of an untidy bun. His Grandma Titi, dead four years, but big as life itself with that wide, welcoming smile. She waved, then beckoned to him to join her. Unthinking, he charged forward, and everything collapsed under his feet.

Tarkin leaned forward, intensely interested, as Hugo finished, "...When I woke up, Mom and a bunch of other women were screaming. Cherries flashing, cops and firemen everywhere. And two of the neighbors... they were dead."

As if this was exactly what he had come to hear, Tarkin leaned back, satisfied. "Hugo, we would like to offer you a bed at Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. We think it would suit your particular situation better."

When Hugo looked at the shrink, he gave an indifferent shrug.

Carmen took advantage of the silence. "It's nice, Hugo. They showed me the pictures. They have trees, and a rec room and everything. The Hanso Foundation will even pay for it. It's some kind of charity."

The doctor sighed, and this time Hugo heard him as clear as a bell. _If_ _Reyes_ _doesn't take th_ _is_ _offer, he's an idiot._ But the doctor's lips hadn't moved.

All at once, a wave of sleepiness overcame Hugo. Folding his arms, he put his head down on the conference table.

Carmen poked him hard, then said to the doctor in a cutting tone, "What's wrong with him? I thought you were supposed to be helping him here. He's not even listening."

A small edge of anger crept into the doctor's voice."It's been a challenge to stabilize Mr. Reyes's medications, given his—"

"We understand that everyone is doing their best," Tarkin said quickly. "Why don't we just sign the releases now? It will be a voluntary commitment, of course." He put his face close to Hugo's ear, close enough for his voice to penetrate the chemical fog. "The Santa Rosa van is waiting outside, Hugo. What do you say?"

Hugo raised his head from his arms, and shook himself as if slapped awake. In a terrible instant of clarity he took it all in: the barred, filthy windows which kept out most of the bright midday sun. The doctor's threadbare suit and his haggard expression. His mother's impatience. His faded hospital-issue sweats, some of the stains his, some of them from who knew where. He scrawled his name across the papers without even looking at them, and ignored his mother as he shuffled out the door behind Grand Moff Tarkin.

It seemed that the drive to the Santa Rosa hospital took forever, but that was probably the drugs. When the van pulled up into the circle drive, an enormous, centuries-old oak tree welcomed him with green and open arms.

"No," Hugo repeated. "Santa Rosa wasn't bad at all."

Instead of answering, Claire slipped her hand into his and gave it a little squeeze. Like a kid learning his times tables, he recited to himself over and over that it didn't mean anything. Claire had always taken people's hands. When they had lived at the beach camp, there probably wasn't a single person there she hadn't held hands with at one point or another. Well, not Jin, or that jerky guy who got himself blown up. But pretty much everyone else.

Her eyes swam with sympathy. "I'm glad you got better."

"I want you to get better, too. That's why it would be a good idea to—"

At that instant, Kate and Carole came out onto the patio, Carole with a coffee tray, and Kate with one laden with croissants, jam, and butter. Claire quickly pulled away her hand with that same furtive look of the night before, then glanced around. "Where's Aaron?"

"Carole put in a DVD in for him." Kate said. Through the open patio door came the soft tinkling of a piano, and the sounds of Aaron making his toy trolley run in circles on the coffee table.

"Mum, what gives?" Claire said, surprised. "You hate the telly."

"It's educational television," Carole said as she poured coffee. "We need a few minutes."

Kate sat down with folded arms, her face unreadable. "Hurley, while you were sleeping in, Claire, Carole and I talked." She then fell silent.

Never again had Hugo heard anyone's unspoken thoughts since that one afternoon in the LA County General psych ward. Now, though, the three women sat silently, as if he was supposed to know exactly what they were thinking without being told.

Finally, Kate spoke. "It's just that I'm still trying to figure out what you want, Hurley."

He shot back, "What do _you_ want, Kate?"

She looked shocked at first, as if no one had asked her that in a long time. "I want my house. And don't bother reminding me how it's closed down, or that everything's in storage. That I'm never going there again, that this is my life now. I heard it all from Richard already. That I'm lucky to be here and not in jail."

Hugo wished that Richard had found a nicer way to tell her. But it was what it was.

"And you know what else I want, Hurley," she went on. "The one thing... the one person not you with all your protector powers, or all your money, or Mittelos with all its drugs, or anyone else can give me."

Claire glided to her feet, as if she wanted to slip out. Her expression said she'd heard this before, and everything was still deadlocked. "I'm going to go check on Aaron."

Sending a scowl around the table, Kate got up, too.

Carole started to protest, "Kate, I think Claire's perfectly capable of—" but it was too late, because Kate had already followed Claire into the living room.

Carole turned to Hugo with a sigh. "There's something you have to understand. When Kate left Aaron with me, and went to the Island, I knew she wasn't sure she was ever going to return. Yes, she's unhappy. But she's taken good care of things here, to the point where she's convinced herself that if she lets go for even a few seconds, everything will fall apart."

"That's not all, is it? It has to do with Jack. And me."

"There's a lot of blame there. See, she still doesn't believe that Jack died for anything. You're not going to easily shake her out of that view."

Kate stood in the wide doorway between the living room and the pool deck, pretending she hadn't heard any of this. "So, Hurley, when's your flight?"

"The plane takes off at six, but I got to run by Mom and Dad's first."

"They have flights to this Island?" Carole said.

"Charter ones."

Kate decided to pile on. "What airline?"

"Herarat."

"Never heard of it."

That made her luckier than Juliet, didn't it? Hugo thought.

"I suppose you own that one, too?" Kate continued.

"Nah. Still in negotiations." Hugo had been astonished at Mittelos Bioscience's complicated corporate holdings, the tentacles of some great octopus which reached everywhere.

"You know, I think I liked you better when you were playing ping pong on the beach. Now, it's like you're obsessed with business, and companies, and foundations. Whatever happened to plain old Hurley, who was just—"

"Kate, please—" Carole began.

"Just what?" He wanted to blurt out, _Still in a locked ward,_ _you mean_ _?_ but didn't. He'd had that thought, too: if he'd stayed in Santa Rosa, Jack might still be alive. No way was he going down that path, though. That would be like the deck accident all over again.

A thick, heavy sadness settled on him. Not anger, because this was Kate: Jack's widow even though they'd never set foot in a church to make it official. As soon as Kate had gotten back from the Island, she'd fetched Jack's engagement ring from her safety deposit box, and hadn't taken it off since. As Kate twisted the ring on her hand, the same ache wrenched through his stomach.

"Nothing," Kate said, backing down. "I'm just tired, Hurley, and I need a little time. Also, I want to call Margo, run it by her."

Hugo stood up and pulled a couple of business cards from his wallet. "No prob, Kate. Mull it over. You guys want to check out Malibu Springs, be my guest. This is just the Shephard Foundation's number, 'cause we don't have the Island sat-phone system set up yet." Then, on a whim, he scrawled something on the back of each card. "Or you can give my parents a call. I don't need to be there." He handed a card to each of them, then looked at his waterproof sports watch, picked up on sale at Dollar-Mart for $19.99. "Gotta go, guys."

"I'll see you to the door," Kate said, subdued.

"Why don't you finish your coffee, Kate?" Carole's tone carried the slightest edge of stern-librarian. "I'm sure Hugo can find his way out."

At first Hugo thought Kate was going to argue. Instead, she sat down and started buttering a croissant.

In the living room, Claire and Aaron sat on opposite ends of the long sofa. The blue glow of the television turned her blue eyes into deep, shadowed pools. On the screen, Mr. Rogers told a young, pretty woman in a high-necked dress that everyone made mistakes. What was important was to try and fix them.

"I got to go real soon, Claire." Hugo looked longingly at the space on the couch between them. She hesitated for a heartbeat, then patted it. When he sat down, the cushions on either side rose up, lifting both mother and child in a rising tide.

Aaron squirmed over to Hugo. "Hey, little buddy," said Hugo. "You know what? I used to watch this show."

Aaron half-turned, dividing his eye between the screen and Hugo. "But it's for kids." He leaned over to his mom. "Did you watch it, Mommy Claire?"

"I don't think we had it in Australia, sweetie."

"Are you from Australia too?" Aaron asked Hugo.

"Nope," Hugo said. "Although it would be awesome to be from Australia. Like I once said, Australia is the key to the whole game." He glanced over at Claire, but of course she didn't know what he was talking about. "My mom and dad live here, in Los Angeles."

Aaron was quiet for a second. "I don't have a dad."

"That's cool. Some people don't," Hugo said.

"I have two mommies. Like Heather."

"Who's Heather?"

Claire laughed and pulled herself up on the couch. "It's from a kid's book."

"Hey, Aaron," said Hugo. "You wanna see a trick?"

"Sure!" Aaron leaned over, Mr. Rogers forgotten. Silently, Claire moved to turn off the DVD.

"Here." Hugo took a quarter from his pocket and handed it to Aaron. "Look it over. Make sure it's not a trick quarter."

The little boy turned it over in his fingers several times.

"Put your hands behind your back, and put the quarter in one of them. Don't let me see which one. Okay, you got it? Now, stick your hands out in front."

"That's not a trick. That's dumb."

"Ah," said Hugo. "Open your hands."

Aaron gave a little squeak of surprise at his empty hands, no quarter in either one. He patted the cushions next to him, looking around. "Where is it?"

"Check your pajama pocket, little dude."

Aaron reached in and pulled out a quarter. "Mommy Claire, how'd he do that?"

"You never ask the magician," Claire said. "Trade secret, right?"

Carole and Kate stood in the doorway. In a clipped voice Kate said, "When did you learn to do magic tricks, Hurley?"

Hugo rose to his feet. "I didn't."

Claire started to pull herself from the couch, and hope leapt inside Hugo. Maybe she would walk him to his car, let him steal another few moments alone with her. All at once, Aaron launched himself onto her lap, pinning her down. Her astonished look said that didn't happen very often, and she wasn't about to miss the opportunity. As Hugo slow-walked towards the front door, Aaron nestled into Claire's lap, so that she could follow Hugo only with her gaze. "Bye, Hurley," she finally said, as if they were the only two in the room.

It took all his strength to force the words out. "See you when I get back in town."

As he pulled the door shut behind him, his last glimpse was of Kate, supporting her weary head in one hand as she lifted the phone to call Margo.

( _continued_ )


	3. Safe House 3

**C** **hapter 3:** **Safe House (Part 3)**

Hugo pulled up behind his parents' new house, the sprawling one-story bungalow which replaced their Santa Monica mansion. A screen of oak trees shaded the front porch, and the driveway curved around the back of the double lot. Hugo's parents had picked their house for privacy this time, not luxury. Bougainvillea in full flower covered the sunny south wall, where the magenta flowers glowed against the rich yellow stucco.

Grandma Titi always had a knack with plants, and had passed on some of her skill to her daughter. In the back yard, Carmen dug alongside a neighborhood teenager as they planted fruit trees.

"Hey, Mom," Hugo said.

His mother dropped her shovel and ran up to him, enveloping him in a hug. When she let him come up for air, she pulled two twenty-dollar bills from her pocket and handed them to the boy. "Eduardo, that's enough for today. Come on back tomorrow, before lunch."

"You got it, Mrs. Reyes. Wow, thanks!"

After the boy left, Hugo looked into the shallow hole. "Was he here an hour, even?"

Carmen gave Hugo's arm a light smack. "What, since when did you get stingy? Don't you ever let me catch you turning into some kind of miser. Eduardo there, his father just had a heart attack and he can't work. With you and Diego both gone, there's a lot to do around here. Anyway, I wanted him to go home so I could talk to you."

Hugo picked up the shovel and started to dig. When Carmen got that tone in her voice, sometimes he could distract her by doing work. Complimenting her cooking had the same effect. "So what are these, Ma? Apples? Peaches?"

"Plums, Mr. Don't Change the Subject."

"Yay, plum jam. Can't wait."

Carmen smiled. "Well, you better learn to wait. Three years till they make enough fruit for it to be worthwhile. So now, tell me why you have to stay with two women, and not with your parents."

"Three women, Ma. Claire's mom was there too."

His father came out the back door into the garden. "Hugo, you spent the night with three women? And your mother let you live?" David gave his son a thumbs-up.

"Dad, that was just a dumb text. I'm not a compose-on-the-fly guy."

Carmen raised an eyebrow. "If it were Diego, I would have taken a broom to him. Anyway, I just got off the phone with Mrs. Littleton."

Uh, oh. That was fast work.

"She's very nice."

That was how these conversations always started. Hugo looked over to his dad for help, but David just shrugged. "I'll bet you haven't had lunch, son. Think I'll make you a sandwich or two for the road."

"Just one," Carmen snapped. "He could still stand to drop a hundred. I don't know how your brother does it, Hugo. Nothing but pizza, chili dogs, chips, all that _basura_ , and barely a spare tire."

"How deep you want this hole, Ma?" He wasn't sure whether he meant the one for the tree, or the one his mother was preparing for him to fall into.

"Hugo, put down the shovel. This Mrs. Littleton, she's got that Masterpiece Theater sound. She's what, English?"

"Australian."

"Pickles, onions, or both?" David called through the open back door.

"Ma, I'm going to help Dad. He tends to overdo it in the kitchen."

"You're right. Let's go keep an eye on him," said Carmen.

At the polished kitchen table, Carmen poured Hugo an orange soda and set it before him. "Don't give me that look, mister. It's diet. This Mrs. Littleton said that you knew Claire from the plane crash, from when you were on the Island the first time." She leaned forward expectantly, elbows on the table. "She said this Claire was a friend of yours. So why haven't I met her yet?"

"Ma, some pretty bad things happened to Claire. Remember I told you that while we were on the Island, a lot of people died? There was a bunch of other stuff, too. Claire was kidnapped, which is why she never made it to the chopper."

"Kidnapped!" Carmen said. "By who?"

"Someone very bad. He's dead now." With his mom, some Island truths needed to be dealt out in dribs and drabs.

"Mother of God," Carmen said as she made the sign of the cross. "That poor girl."

David lowered a double-decker chicken-and-Canadian bacon sandwich in front of Hugo, then exchanged a long look with his wife. "Son, I hope you don't hold it against her. Whatever happened, it wasn't her fault."

"What do you mean, Dad? Of course I don't hold it against her."

"That's good, buddy. Some guys would."

"Ma, what's he talking about?" Carmen didn't answer, so Hugo went on. "Did Mrs. Littleton say anything else?"

Carmen said, "Your friend Kate, she's having a hard time."

"She lost her fiance, Ma."

"Jack. The one who showed up late to your party."

"He got busy at the hospital that day. Ma, how do you remember all that stuff?"

David chuckled. "Sooner you learn this, Hugo, the better. Women and elephants never forget. This girl Claire, what she look like?"

Carmen gave an indignant sniff. "Not that we would even have to ask, if he would have introduced us."

"Ma, I explained. She had a rough time on the Island. I thought it would be better to let her settle in first."

"At least Kate comes down to visit us once in awhile, even if she prefers Jack's mother."

"Carmencita, that's natural," said David. "She was going to be Kate's mother-in-law. She practically is, anyway. So what does this mystery girl look like, son?"

"Um, well, she has blue eyes. She's blonde, I guess. Little, but, uh..."

"Curves in all the right places?" David said, his eyes glinting a little.

"Yeah, something like that."

Carmen gave a little cough. "At least she's Catholic."

"Ma!" Hugo exclaimed. "You asked Mrs. Littleton that?"

"I didn't have to," Carmen said, her chin lifting with pure righteousness. "How nosy do you think I am? Claire told her mother that there was a priest on the plane, and that he baptized Claire and her little boy."

"Mr. Eko," Hugo said. Even as a ghost, Eko hadn't said much. He wished he'd gotten to spend more time with Eko when he was alive.

"Mr. Eko? Is that any way to refer to a man of the cloth? Since she was baptized by a Catholic priest, that makes her a Catholic. Why did I bother sending you to learn your catechism if you forget all of it?"

"Okay, Ma, whatever."

"Don't you whatever me. A husband and wife, they should be of the same religion. Look what happened to your brother. At least that—"

"Ma, don't go there," Hugo said in a warning voice.

"That _woman_ was never baptized. So at least he could get an annulment."

David laughed. "I don't think Diego's gonna make use of that annulment anytime soon. He's too busy driving trucks up in North Dakota, keeping the local working gals busy. So, Hugo, this girl. She got a boyfriend?"

"No, Dad."

"She's got a little boy," Carmen announced. "Like I said."

"So she's got a kid," David said in a musing tone. "She not divorced, is she?"

"Don't worry," Carmen said to her husband. "I already asked that."

Hugo groaned. "Ma, for God's sake."

"Hugo, you think we would be sitting around, talking about this, if she was divorced? So she made a mistake with the wrong guy. He ran out on her. But I guess, Mr. Ladies' Man, you know all about these things."

Hugo just shook his head, wondering how long this roller coaster ride was going to go on, and how he was going to get off.

Unperturbed, Carmen continued. "That was a good idea, lining up that place in the canyon. Fresh air, that's what her mother said she needs. Claire can get out into the country, into the fresh air."

"Your mother, she swears by fresh air," said David. "The windows in _Casa_ _Reyes_ are always open." As if on cue, a breeze blew in through the back doorway, bringing with it the scent of the climbing roses which had survived the summer heat. "You want another sandwich, Hugo?"

"No, he doesn't," said Carmen. "He puts on more weight, this girl might not look at him."

"Ma, give me a break, alright?"

David screwed up his face to suppress the laughter. "Carmencita, if she cared, do you think you and her mom would have even had that phone conversation?"

Hugo tried to interrupt. "Ma, Dad, I told you, I got a plane to catch, and a bunch of phone calls to make first. Let's not argue about this, okay?"

Carmen and David both ignored Hugo. "Don't encourage him," she said to her husband.

"Relax, _cariño_ ," David said. "Maybe she likes big guys. I don't hear you complaining much about me," and he patted his paunch.

"Dad," Hugo said. Conversations in his house were like playing ping-pong. Sometimes you could skip it right off the edge of the table, and sometimes it just went flying wild and hit the wall. This was one of those times. "You know those medical supplies I asked you about last time, the ones I need to take back with me? Did you get them shipped to the Herarat Aviation terminal?"

"Done. You gonna wear a suit to the airport this time, like I suggested? Tie back that mane? And for the love of all that's good and holy, don't speed. 'Cause I don't want to have to bail you out of the LA lockup."

"I'm gonna get my stuff together," Hugo said with a resigned sigh, as he headed for his bedroom and flipped open his phone.

:*:*:*:*:

After Hugo pulled out of the driveway, David turned to his wife. "You know, that was real good of your new friend Mrs. Littleton to invite us up for a visit."

"I guess I forgot to mention that to Hugo, didn't I?" Carmen said as she loaded the dishwasher. "Oops."

"Well, you know what they say. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Her daughter and grand-son gonna be around, too?"

Carmen added dishwashing soap and rolled her eyes. "You have to ask?"

"Good idea, _cariño._ Kind of a little fact-finding mission."

Carmen smiled. This was going far better than she had expected.

* * *

The inside of the Herarat Airlines general-aviation hangar was dark, despite the blazing late-afternoon sun which burned the tarmac to a deep bronze. Hugo left the keys in the Hummer, then headed for the Gulfstream 550 jet idling on a spur which led to the main runway. The Herarat ground crew was busy loading boxes into the G550's cargo bay.

Hugo had barely climbed halfway up the metal stairs, when the pilot stuck his scruffy head out the plane's open door. At the sight, Hugo raced up the rest of the way so quickly that the stairs swayed alarmingly. "Frank!" he shouted.

"Hey, big fella, easy there."

"Dude, this is fantastic! So you got your pilot's license back!" Hugo tackled Frank in a bear hug, then stooped to pick up the pilot's cap, which had fallen off because of Hugo's enthusiasm.

Chuckling, Frank led Hugo to a leather recliner in the cabin. "Courtesy of the Republic of Tunisia. Usually I'm on the North Africa run, but Richard told me you were flying out today, and I didn't want to miss it."

Hugo glanced over to a shadowed figure who sat deeply recessed in the dim cabin. "Hey, Richard," he said, suddenly unsure. Over the months, Hugo had racked up hours on the phone with Richard, but this was the first time he had seen him in the flesh since becoming protector. "Cool surprise, man. Just didn't think you were ready to go back to the Island so soon."

Frank clapped Hugo on the shoulder with a loud thwack. "Time to finish the take-off checklist. I'll give a holler when we're in international waters."

After Frank disappeared into the cockpit, Hugo settled himself across from Richard. He looked tired, with grey wings of hair swept back over his ears, and more lines in his face than Hugo remembered. "How's it going?"

Richard gestured beneath a table, to a box full of satellite phones and portable antennas. "They'll be ready to go live when we get there." He sounded as weary as he looked.

As the plane taxied onto the runway, Hugo studied Richard's silent, weathered face. He couldn't tell if Richard was aging faster than he should, because he didn't know how old Richard had been when Jacob zapped him with longevity rays. He waited until the hazy LA skyline had fallen far behind them, before he spoke. "You know, man, when we get to the Island, you could kick back awhile. Hit the beach, do some surfing. Didn't you say that Mittelos kinda runs itself?"

Richard sighed, as if even forming the words was exhausting. "It's just that there's... so little time. That's what's eating away at me, Hugo. Time."

So that was it. An intense desire to help surged over Hugo, the need to fix things. That's what Kate had always complained about with Jack, how he wanted to fix everything, everyone. Hugo understood why Jack had done it, though. When you had the power, or the knowledge to help, that's what you did, until you couldn't do it any longer. "Listen, Richard. You know, just because that whole aging thing started up again when Jacob died... If you wanted to, I could—"

"I've made my peace," Richard broke in. His tone was resigned, but a little life had come back into his eyes. "You know what the first thing I did was, after Ajira 316 got back?"

Hugo shook his head. He himself had gone to the In-N-Out Burger in Marina del Rey for a vanilla shake and had practically inhaled it. That was before calling his mom, even, or Kate.

"I went to confession, in Portland. Eloise gave me the number for this priest friend of hers. All these decades I'd been traveling between here and the Island, I'd never thought to go. I thought I was beyond forgiveness—"

"Dude, nobody's beyond forgiveness."

"That's exactly what Fr. Campbell said. Everything I'd thought, everything I'd done, all of it was based on the lie that because I'd killed a man, I was beyond redemption."

He shifted in his seat, and for awhile he and Hugo stared out at the sunset-red Pacific, its waves like red flowers strewn across an ocean of bright gold. Finally Richard said, "That's why I let Jacob do what he did. Pure foolishness."

"No way," Hugo protested. "If you'd just gone ahead and died, you couldn't help me with stuff like this." Hugo pushed the box of communications equipment with his toe. "I don't know what I'd do without you and Ben both. You keep everything running, while I dunno, all I do is keep the people from the Temple from getting into fights with the ones in the Barracks. Or convincing the ones in the fishing village to stop tossing spears at outriggers when they paddle by."

"I'll talk to them," Richard said with a chuckle in his eyes. "Vanessa will listen to me."

"Awesome." Hugo paused for a few heartbeats, not wanting to overshoot the basket like he'd done with Kate. "Look, I get why you took Jacob up on his offer. But mine still stands. All you got to do is ask."

Richard seemed to sink back into the evening that was rapidly filling the cabin. When he spoke, he sounded vague and thin as a ghost. "Did you make the same offer to Ben?"

Busted, six ways from Sunday. "Yeah, I did."

Richard didn't seem mad, though. "I suppose he turned you down."

"It was cool. He had reasons." Richard didn't ask, and Hugo didn't feel like explaining. Ben had said that every day he lived past his natural span would be just another one to see Alex's face right before she hit the ground, dead of a bullet to the head. The bitterness in Ben's words had sliced through Hugo, and he had never asked Ben again. "Also, Richard, I thought you'd be kinda used to living like the Highlander by now."

Now Richard did laugh. Not much of one, but enough to lighten the mood.

Frank walked into the cabin. Although Hugo knew that the jet was on autopilot, it still creeped him out to peer into the empty cockpit. "Do you have to do that?"

"You kidding? Good thing they keep the cockpit doors closed in the big jets, Hurley, so that passengers can't see what goes on. Seth Norris and I used to play cards." He challenged Hugo with a mischievous smile, daring him to believe him. "We're over international waters now. You ready?"

"Yeah, let's boogie." As Frank ambled back to the pilot's chair, Hugo took a deep breath, trying to focus all his attention. Richard buckled up, even though it wouldn't have mattered one bit.

Hugo had promised to take care of the Island as long as he could, and that meant spending most of his time butt-in-seat, like they say. But if he could shave an 18-hour flight down to a two-hour one, so much the better.

He closed his eyes. He wasn't worried about himself, because if he screwed up, he'd land in the ocean (he hoped) and just float along like a cork until he (most likely) hit land or a ship picked him up. But it would be another story for Richard and Frank.

 _Never mind. Here goes._

The rush of wind moving over the jet's wings stopped, as did the vibration of the engines as the air around them disappeared. The plane was cocooned in silence, and when Hugo looked about, he noticed that Richard's eyes were screwed shut, and his hands clenched the butter-soft recliner leather.

The red-gold sweep of the Pacific Ocean had vanished, leaving nothing visible but an opaque, milky-gray soup. Its dull whiteness glowed as if lit by a fading sun, but Hugo didn't know what actually made it light up like that, and wasn't planning on finding out. This part of the trip only lasted a few moments, or so it felt by the beating of his heart, but he couldn't fight the sweat that formed on his upper lip, or the trembling in his hands as he clung to his own seat the way Richard did.

Wherever the hell they were, it wasn't on this earth.

Suddenly the grey mist parted, and once more the ocean spread out before them, only this time it shone like a blue-green jewel. Thick cottony clouds drifted low enough to leave shadows on the water.

Hugo tapped Richard's arm. "Hey, you can look now."

Soon enough, they saw great waves crest and break against the white-sand beaches that ringed the green, grassy Island.

Frank's voice crackled with warmth over the speaker. "Preparing to descend to HYI, gentlemen: Hydra Island International Airport. Good thing two-thirds of the runway's still there, at least."

"Pilot jokes," Richard said. "God save me from pilot jokes."

Frank wasn't done, though. "Hey, Hurley, we got to stop meeting like this. When you gonna put a ring on it, make it legal? Then we can register HYI as a legitimate airport, and I can stop lying on my flight plans."

"He's got a point," Richard said. Suddenly, Frank made a sharp bank, bringing Hydra Island's rocky airstrip into view. It wasn't until the Gulfstream's wheels touched the bumpy ground that Richard broke into a smile. "It's like a miracle, every time."

Hugo couldn't argue with that.

( _continued_ )


	4. Unmailed Letters 1

**Chapter 4: Unmailed Letters (Part 1)**

The two women drank iced tea in Margo's house, refilling their glasses from the pitcher because it was easier than starting on the task at hand. Storage-locker boxes contrasted strongly with the rich upholstery and glossy wood of the antiques which filled the living room. When Margo rattled the ice in her glass for the third time, Kate decided to take the plunge. "So, this is the last of it?"

Margo nodded. "I've been through every box. Unlike his father, Jack was highly organized." She gestured towards the thick leather binder which lay on the coffee table.

It contained the sum of Jack's legal and financial life, including the trust papers which he had delivered to Margo two days before boarding Ajira 316 for Guam. That is, for the Island. As trustee, Margo had complete power of attorney over everything, and she had apologized to Kate for that more than once. "He didn't know if you would be... available." It was her Upper East Side way of saying that Kate could have well been hauled off to jail, and thus incapable of handling Jack's affairs. Margo was nothing if not eminently capable, as Kate had come to learn.

Not only capable, but kind as well, once her frosty exterior began to melt. For months after Kate had returned from the Island with baby Aaron in arms, she had been convinced that Margo disliked her. Now, Margo's cool scrutiny didn't even give Kate pause, for Margo applied it to everyone who crossed her path.

"Well, I suppose we should get started, then." Margo rose, without waiting for Kate's nod of agreement.

The packing tape on the boxes had been neatly sliced. Kate hung back, suddenly shy. One dreadful weekend last January, with Kate at his side, Hurley had sat in this very living room, choking out Jack's final story through tears. Margo had sat ramrod-stiff, repeating, "I knew it. I knew something had gone terribly wrong."

Soon afterward, Margo had sent movers to empty out the condo which Jack had moved into, after leaving Kate. The furniture and drapes had been leased, so back they went. Even the bed, Kate had thought at the time, full of bitterness. Even the bed where they had slept together for the last time.

The contents of the leather binder had satisfied the lawyer, and all that remained were the personal effects. Bric-a-brac _,_ Kate said to herself, turning over the ugly phrase in her mind.

Margo opened the first box. "I wanted you to have a chance to examine everything."

"I appreciate that." Kate waited for Margo to start, but Margo nodded for her to go ahead.

Kate hesitated. "What about Sarah?" Jack's ex-wife had been the one Jack had called, after the accident on the bridge. But she had missed Jack's memorial service, having just delivered her baby.

Margo gave a sniff. "Well, if you think there's anything Sarah should have, feel free. It wasn't Jack's way to be bitter." As an afterthought, Margo added, "Was Claire busy today?"

"Claire said she trusted me to pick for her," Kate answered. Deep down, Kate suspected that Claire felt intimidated and even overwhelmed by Margo. But if Margo harbored any leftover resentment towards her husband's daughter, she kept it firmly under wraps. It was merciful, really, because Kate couldn't have borne Margo and Carole fighting. Or worse, if Margo had directed any fury against Claire and Aaron.

Rummaging through a box of clothing, Kate pulled out an Irish sweater of cream-colored yarn, hand-knit. She slid the fabric between her fingers, then set aside the reserve she always kept up around Margo. Pressing the sweater to her face, she breathed in deeply, drinking in the scents of lanolin, moth spray, and an undertone that might have been Jack. "I'd like this, if you don't mind."

"You don't have to ask."

Kate pulled out a few more sweaters, as well as a couple of crisp Egyptian cotton shirts. The dress slacks, suits, and the rest all went back into the box, to be delivered to the charity store of St. Dismas parish.

"There's so little here," Kate remarked as she re-taped the box. "Before we left, his rooms were so bare."

"I suspect he'd already cleaned it up before the flight."

When Kate was done, Margo said, "For this one, you might want to brace yourself."

Margo's tight grimace sent a flicker of anxiety through Kate's middle. When she had slid into Jack's bed for the last time, his condo had been scrubbed spotless, stripped bare of books, paintings, most everything. All gone. In the dark hollow of their last night together, Kate had untangled herself from Jack's warm, inert limbs, to get a drink of water. In the bathroom, she poked through cabinets bare of almost everything except a toothbrush and some travel items.

That night, she had been swamped by a cold realization. Jack's home looked as if he wasn't planning on coming back. Hurt twisted around her like a jungle vine. If he wasn't returning, where did that leave her? Puzzled, sad, she had crawled back into the comfortable spot next to him, spooned him from behind, and kept her hands to herself so not to wake him. She had fallen asleep with her face pressed between his strong shoulders, as his breath rose and fell in time with hers.

Today as every day, she wished she had roamed all up and down the length of his lean, firm body, roused him out of sleep, kept him up until dawn, because it had been the last time, and now he was gone.

Kate pulled up the cardboard flap, feeling Margo's gaze, as if she waited for Kate's shock, wonder, despair.

The long box was surprisingly light for its size. Inside, rolled-up papers of all kinds were laid side by side: navigational charts for aviation, star charts for both hemispheres, a World War II military map of the Pacific with little ships printed on it. Kate leafed through printouts of airline schedules heavily marked in red, their margins full of scrawled notes. She almost pricked her hand on a compass, the high-school geometry kind with a pencil clamped on one side and a sharp metal point on the other. There was also a strange, circular piece of brass equipment that she didn't recognize. She turned it over in her hands, curious.

"It's an astrolabe," Margo said. "A way to navigate at sea, using the stars." She paused, as if apologizing. "It's a Tunisian antique. I found the bill of sale in his desk. Why would Jack want such a thing, Kate?"

Kate knew, and wished she didn't. After Jack's death, Margo had gone through all of his credit card receipts, line by line: the bar bills from Singapore or Tokyo, the overnight stays in Bangkok or Sydney hotels. At the time she had asked Kate if Jack was going down the same path as his father, but Kate had remained silent.

A hot flush of shame covered Kate's face as she argued with herself inside. What could Margo have done to stop Jack, anyway? Called the family lawyers, or the doctors at Santa Rosa? Tears sprang to her eyes, and her voice shook. "Margo, I'm sorry. He told me he was flying every weekend, hoping to crash." She rushed on, ignoring Margo's harsh, drawn-in breath, the steel in her expression. "I should have called you, maybe we could have done something—"

"Such as?"

"I don't know. Told someone, tried to get him some help." (So that he wouldn't have gone back. But where would that have left Claire?) Kate felt like a bug pinned to a board, unable to escape or go on. "It's my fault, because I wouldn't answer his calls. And then, when I did—"

"No one blames you, Kate. You were protecting your... the child. Because I certainly didn't protect mine."

There was no answer to that, so Kate picked up a flight schedule covered with numbers scrawled in pencil. "This was all he thought about. Not Aaron, not me. Ever since that night he went to see Hurley, he was like a train stuck on tracks that lead only to one place." She crumpled the schedule and tossed it back into the box. "Burn it all. Put it in the rubbish, I don't care."

"You don't mean that."

"I sure as hell do." Kate got up to pace the beautifully-appointed room, so old-fashioned with its thick textures and heavy furniture. "I should have called you right away, after that crazy night when Jack met me at the airport and told me about making those flights. That's not what a sane person does, Margo. It could have bought us 72 hours, at least. Maybe it would have been enough."

"Enough?"

"Enough to bring Jack to his senses."

With a sigh, Margo closed the box of star charts. "Kate, when I first heard yours and Jack's story, it felt like I'd fallen into some unlikely dream. Your friend Hugo sat right where you are now, and my mind raged against every word he said. But it's impossible to disbelieve him, isn't it?"

"It's a superpower, all right," Kate snorted, hiding behind sarcasm. Hurley couldn't be lied to, and his capacity for truth could be terrifying.

"In twenty minutes, everything I had thought about Jack's father, about Jack, everything that happened... All of it was wrong. Kate, I know you're not religious, but it wouldn't have done any good to lock Jack up. What I mean is, it wouldn't have worked. No place could have held him; no jail, no mental hospital. He would have escaped, or someone would have let him out, just as they did Hugo. It would have been like trying to lock up St. Peter."

Kate frowned. Hurley had this effect on people, where they started out sensible and then started spewing nonsense. There was no arguing with Margo, though. At least she hadn't burst into accusations or recriminations, like her own mother would have. Kate unrolled a beautifully printed map, colored in soft blues, browns, and greens. "Fine, I'll take them back to the house. Claire is into the star stuff, so maybe she'll get more out of it than I can. Anyway, it's good for her to have something of Jack's."

The small, knowing smile on Margo's face reassured Kate, and she let out the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

Margo had already moved on to the last container, the one labeled "Bedroom." Inside, surrounded by black socks and rolled-up ties, was a jewelry box made of glossy, reddish wood. The lid was embossed with two enameled elephants, their curved trunks touching. "It's empty," Kate said in a disgruntled voice as she opened it. She felt slightly cheated, as if Jack had been hiding something. When she turned the box upside-down, a soft thud came from inside. Not a rattle, exactly, but definitely a sound that didn't belong. "I've never seen this before."

"It was high on a closet shelf, behind some suitcases."

Kate studied the rounded script on the underside. "From Thailand, apparently."

Now it was Margo's turn to look uncomfortable. "He spent a month there after the divorce. His father suggested he take a leave from the hospital, relax overseas." She hesitated, as if the words stuck in her throat. "There was a woman."

To Kate, the enameled box suddenly grew ugly as an accusation. "How did you know that?"

"He told his father, and that was the last I heard of it. I assumed it was something passing. Unimportant."

Kate started to tremble. Perched precariously on her knees, so did the jewelry box. "Did she... give this to him?"

"I don't think so. The receipt was from a duty-free shop in the Phuket airport."

A wave of relief hit Kate with such force that she leaned back. The box slid from her knees, falling to the hardwood floor with a loud crack as the hinged top flew open. A piece of wood sprang out with a clatter. "Oh, my God, what—"

Both women stared in shock at the jewelry box's false bottom. It lay at their feet, along with a handful of envelopes scattered across the floor.

Margo whispered, "I could have sworn it was empty."

Kate picked up the wooden piece. "It was probably for hiding jewelry. You put the costume stuff on top, and the expensive pieces underneath."

At first, neither of them moved towards the letters. Finally, Margo gathered them up, then raised her pale face to Kate's. "They're for you."

The cream-colored envelopes almost fell out of Kate's numb, shaking hands. Each one was sealed, and addressed to her in Jack's spiky handwriting. He'd used a fountain pen, with dark ink thick like paint.

There were five in all, two on Oceanic Airlines stationery. Each looked ready to be mailed, complete with Jack's return address, and even a stamp, except for the last. That one bore only a single word: her name. Kate.

"I had no idea," Margo murmured.

"How could you? They were hidden."

"Just so you understand, Kate, I would never have kept something like this from you—"

"Margo, it's all right." All the same, Kate ran her finger over the envelopes' seals, hating herself yet checking all the same. Each looked intact. Then Kate felt ashamed, because even if her own mother would have read them, Margo never would.

She carefully placed the letters in the Thai box, fighting the overwhelming urge to race out of the house as quickly as she could. She hated to leave Margo with the sorry task of hauling the remainders of Jack's earthly life to St. Dismas. Even so, the letters seemed to call to her, begging to be grasped, handled, opened. She couldn't rest as long as they sat there, glowing with some invisible force like radiation. "I have to go, Margo," she finally said.

Margo's sad expression carried no blame. "Naturally. Although we were going to talk about Malibu Springs, if you recall. On the phone you said that you were still unsure."

If anything irritated Kate about Claire, besides that momentary lapse when she had once held a knife to Kate's throat, it was her tendency to rely on signs, portents, the influence of the stars. She seemed to live and move amidst a swirl of unseen forces. But maybe Claire wasn't so foolish after all. What sort of world had Kate herself fallen into, where dreams became real, where a woman the spitting image of older-Claire had almost spirited Aaron away? Where poor, crazy Hurley's ravings had turned out to be true?

It wasn't just Claire who lived inside Hurley's world of signs and ghosts, was it? They all lived in Hurley's world now.

"I've decided," Kate said. "I'm ready to move."

"A wise choice. Ray and Jeanine had a lakeside cottage near there, before she passed. It's a beautiful place."

"We'll start packing up tomorrow."

"Just let me know, and I'll have movers there in a few days."

Kate rose to go. "We don't have much."

"You have yourselves, and my darling nephew. That's more than enough." Tall and grey, she led Kate to the door, regal as a queen with husband and son both slain in battle. Her hug was surprisingly warm, as if she wanted to impart a fraction of her strength to her son's widow by silently saying, If I can bear this, so can you.

* * *

Letting herself in through the back door of the Antelope Drive house, Kate was greeted by the delicious smell of caramelized onions and melted, browned cheese. She had unloaded the last of her burdens when Claire rushed to her, followed by Aaron.

He was covered with green goo, with globs plastered to his hair and stuck to his smock. "Mommy, Mommy, look!" He practically danced with excitement.

She bent down next to him. "What is it, Goober?"

"Mommy Claire and I made Play-Doh. See? Godzilla!" He waved about an indistinct lump with a smaller one for a head, and a longer, oval one for a tail.

"It's all over the kitchen," Claire said. "But it's just flour, and washes up nicely." She turned to Kate, her own face beaming with excitement. "Margo rang up, and she's so glad that you decided—" She stopped short at everything Kate had brought in. "What's all this, now?"

"Just some of Jack's things that Margo and I went through." She tapped the long box. "We thought you might like these. Star charts, maps, for astrology and stuff."

It was the right thing to say, because Claire brightened like a sunflower. "I thought you didn't believe in any of that. Anyway, thanks. It's nice to have something of my brother's."

The Thai box was buried underneath Jack's sweaters and shirts. Kate hated to sidle away from Claire, who seemed happy for the first time in a long while, but she couldn't fight the call of Jack's letters any longer. "I'm kind of bushed, Claire." She glanced over at Aaron, still squeezing the "Godzilla" into different shapes. "Do you think you could give him his bath, tuck him in?"

"Of course. What about supper, though? Mum and I made cheese-rice casserole." She stared at Kate's armload, as if she could see right through it. "Never mind. There'll be some in the fridge if you want."

Once in her room, Kate closed the door and clicked the lock, at the same time telling herself that she was being over-dramatic. When she and Jack had lived together, Jack had insisted that Aaron be taught to knock first and not barge in. So she was safe, for awhile. She spread the letters out on her bed like tarot cards, at first planning to open them one at a time, to draw them out and make them last as long as possible. Finally she finally said to hell with it, and tore into one letter after another, even the last one, so stark and different from the others.

Her mouth went dry, as her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest. Those bold black strokes on the page were nothing like having him lying beside her in bed, yet his presence filled the room. Trembling, eyes blurred with tears, she saw that each letter bore a date in its upper right hand corner, the neatly-drawn numbers oddly legible compared to Jack's script, which looked like scratch-marks carved into the earth by some large, powerful bird.

She arranged the letters in order by date, and began to read.

( _continued_ )


	5. Unmailed Letters 2

**Chapter 5: Unmailed Letters 2**

 **(TW for suicidal thoughts.)**

9/22/2007, Somewhere over the Pacific

Dear Kate,

You probably don't remember when I told you how my father was an excellent raconteur, the best of storytellers. When I was young, he regaled me with tales for endless hours, as I squirmed with discomfort and boredom while the wood paneling of his library walls hemmed me in like the sides of a coffin. In retrospect, the purpose was to toughen me up, give me a taste of what real problems were like. To make sure I'd develop "what it takes."

These stories inevitably began, "Somewhere in Northern Africa," or France, or Belgium, or "On an island in the Pacific." They were all about wars, you see, and the men who fought them. My father explained that the soldiers and sailors started their letters that way because their missives could have been intercepted by enemy troops. As he put it, "Information is funny, son. It can mean both life and death at the same time. Very few things we experience are that way." Thus the men in arms were never to reveal where they were.

He never said precisely what I supposed to do even if I did achieve "What it took." From childhood on, I thought that meant becoming a doctor like him, right up until the day I killed him.

No, Kate, not how you killed Wayne; nothing that forthright. I planted on my father's cheek the kiss of righteousness and deprived him of the only thing which gave his life meaning: his ability to work as a surgeon.

You are probably asking what I'm doing here, gazing out upon a vast ocean unmarred by land or cloud, and believe me, you aren't the only one. Since I killed him, Kate, I've seen him — twice — no doubt hallucinating just as Hurley does. My father is the reason I took all that clonazepem, which led to my banishment from your bed and your life.

I don't even have to see my father, however, to know that he has never left me. He's there in the faintest rustle of a curtain, a creak at the window. It's why on this day I took my Oceanic golden pass to the LAX ticket window and got on this plane for Sydney, somehow certain that he couldn't follow me here. That hasn't stopped me from going to and from the john half a dozen times, just to make sure he's not on the plane.

Of course he isn't. Because that would be insane.

Do you know what day it is, Kate? It's not just a number on a calendar. Three years ago today we were strangers on a plane, just as we are strangers now. Worse than strangers, though, because strangers don't share our burden of memory. I scribble on paper cadged from one of the flight attendants, my heart racing with the notion that on this third anniversary of the crash, it might happen again. That's not a nice thought, is it? But as you said during our last phone conversation right before you hung up on me, I'm not a nice person.

When the plane shakes, my heart races the way it used to when you lay under me, your perfect chin lifted in pure anticipation. Every ding of the warning lights, every crackle of the pilot's loudspeaker take me back to that afternoon when the wind sucked one screaming person after another into the blue void. There, it happened again. Just an air pocket, of course.

It's down there, Kate, I know it. It tracks every plane that crosses its path, sweeping the sky like the volcanic red eye of Sauron. Had I that golden ring in my pocket at this instant, I would slip it on and let Sauron take me and everyone else on board. It wants me, Kate, wants me to return, calls to me from that vast blue field of battle below, as it searches for me with its jewel of a red eye set in a brooch of emerald green.

When I doze off, Claire is there too, nestled against that red circle, so small that she casts no shadow against that searchlight of blood. Claire, my sister, who would have been your sister too, had I not spared you from the horror that festers inside of me. Now Claire is nothing more than a speck in some deep-red gem worn on the breast of a monster.

The plane sails along smoothly towards Sydney, propelled towards something I swore I had left behind forever, the air flawless as the beautiful skin at the small of your back. The air shakes with only the faintest of tremors, in the same way that I stroked that soft hollow as you slept so deeply after love.

If this plane does break apart as Oceanic 815 did three years ago, I will grip the armrests and ride the rocket all the way down, holding before me the memory of your face; the last thing I will ever see.

It wants me, Kate. It wants me and it will never rest until my head is wedged firmly between its jaws.

Regards,

Jack

:*:*:*:*:*:*:

11/09/2007

Dear Kate,

I'm at the office. It's late, and I almost called you to say that I wouldn't be back till after 11, before I remembered that there was no need; that you wouldn't care, and wouldn't answer.

John Locke's X-ray hangs on the light board, staring at me like an indictment.

A week ago, he showed up on the neuro floor, admitted through the ER. He's lucky that he was discharged, because were he still here, I'd wrap my hands around his throat; not just for what happened when he appeared; not just because of the X-ray, but because he foisted himself on you as well.

You threw him out, he said. Good, even though praise from me is probably the last thing you want. I suppose he told you the same outrageous story: "We have to go back;" "The island needs us," and "It's our destiny."

I sent John to radiology, because the triage nurse noted on intake that he'd had a compound fracture less than a month ago. Kate, that wasn't possible. The bones had mostly knit; the muscles had the same integrity as if he'd had months of physical therapy. Six months ago I'd believe, and while neurological complications from compound fractures can persist for years, he had none.

A few days later, I brought up the discrepancy at the department's morbidity and mortality review meeting. The acting chair gave me a dry look before reminding me that patients routinely lie, and that I myself had noted in the chart that the patient showed signs of being delusional.

Hating Locke is nothing compared to the loathing I feel for myself. If he got out, then why couldn't Claire as well? Yet he didn't mention her, and I didn't ask. Why didn't I make him tell me, Kate? I had him right there on the floor, in a hospital bed, but all I could think of was getting him out of there as quickly as possible.

Now I sit at my desk, kicking myself for not asking how he got off the island in the first place. I'm useless, worthless; can't do anything for you, for Claire or Aaron, for Hurley, for my mother who still hasn't forgiven me for my dead father. All of you looked to me to solve everything, to fix everything, but I can't anymore

[this letter ended with several light-brown stains, and was hastily wadded into its envelope.]

:*:*:*:*:*:*:

12/02/2007

Dear Kate, sweet Kate, I must be going mad.

Oceanic 523 hums along in mid-flight over the Pacific, en route from Sydney to LA. The flight was overbooked, but they bumped someone else to give me a seat, a center one in the back of a 777 overloaded with tourists who stink of sunscreen and sour beer.

Didn't some philosopher say that he whom Fate wishes to destroy, she first drives mad? Let me tell you what happened, and you be the judge.

Before my father's memorial service, my mother and I went through his things, and in his bureau dresser I found a crumpled cocktail napkin with an address scrawled on it. Because it would have caused my mother pain, I shoved it into my jacket pocket, yet couldn't bear to get rid of it. It remained in my desk until a few days ago, when I booked this flight to Sydney. Once more I jammed it into my pocket, like a talisman.

On the western outskirts of Sydney, the taxi driver counted out the wad of cash I'd given him to wait. We sat in front of a squat, one-story house that had once been white, but was now light-grey from age and the blistering summer sun. The dust-dry lawn was littered with bright plastic toys of television characters, the kind you would never buy for Aaron, and a knocked-over tricycle.

In the side yard, a young blonde woman pushed a girl about Aaron's age on a swing. The woman was visibly pregnant, and I did a double-take because she looked just like Claire, down to her high-top sneakers. She saw me, then called out something I couldn't distinguish.

A heavy-set Aboriginal man built like a linebacker appeared from behind the house, and fell into position beside her. Through the shimmer of heat and the drinks I'd had on the plane, they looked for a few seconds like Claire and Hurley, transposed somehow into this dry suburban desert. Under their hard stares, I saw myself as they did: a police detective, maybe, a bail bondsman, a lawyer, a truant officer. Nothing good, in other words.

The mother sent the child into the house, and the big man protectively put his arm around her, as I explained that I was looking for Carole Littleton. The woman wanted to know if she was in trouble and I said no, I just wanted to talk to her. If I was going to play the role, I might as well deliver the lines.

The couple didn't know anything, as they had only moved in a year ago, and the house was a rental.

Before leaving Sydney, I called the lawyer who had helped arrange things after Dad's death, but he came up dry. Carole had vanished, Kate, and there was now no one to tell about the crash, or how we had lost Claire, how her grandchild was alive. How we couldn't return for Claire as Hurley wanted, because that damned freighter had blown up with everyone on it. How we never did enough, not ever. How I had hoped that Sawyer had somehow survived and reached the island, impossible as that seemed, and that he'd managed to do what I never could.

Oh, the price we paid, Kate; so high was the cost of our silence, how expensive was our time together, such as it was. The price: that we would never speak of Claire, or Sawyer, or of how Hurley cried during our hospital visits as he told us that it was a mortal sin to tell all those lies.

Since I've gone mad, Kate, I can tell you about those sleepless nights when I promised to lay all of this down at Carole Littleton's feet, how I would beg her forgiveness for not finding her daughter (my sister,) share with her my fond hopeful fantasy that Sawyer had found her, that he was caring for her, even.

But since Carole was gone, I got back onto yet another plane, and drank until the flight attendant cut me off. She handed me the LA Times instead, using the same technique you used to apply to distract Aaron when he got into something he wasn't supposed to. I was too tired to argue.

[This section of the letter was smudged and more scrawled than usual.]

He's dead, Kate. He came into the hospital last month with that insane story, but how insane was it, really? What if everything he said was true, that there was a way after all to return, and that we had to? What if Hurley hasn't just been showing signs of clinical deterioration, but possesses a truth which none of us realize?

Locke has failed, but I've failed everyone too. Claire is gone, as is her family. You are gone. There's nothing left for me, because sometimes in the mornings my hands have started to shake, and if that keeps up, soon I won't be able to work, either. I can see your face right now, set in that stalwart, iron-jawed expression of judgment, and believe me, Kate, no one can condemn me to the lower depths as effectively as I condemn myself.

Even my mother stares at me behind my back, eyes blackened with accusation. I know you're blocking my calls, but would you relent? I know you don't like her, that she makes you uncomfortable. But I beg you, as a last wish, can you find a place in your heart and in your life for her when I can't be there? When I'm gone? Because, Kate, I am already gone.

Even the island is gone. For the first time in all those trans-Pacific flights, I no longer felt it beneath me as we sped through that black sky, over that sunless sea. Now nothing stares back at me through the window save a hypocritical failure of a face, the mask worn by a man who already haunts his own life as a pale and insubstantial ghost.

Visit Hurley for me, would you? Tell him I wish I had been a better friend.

Kiss Aaron for me, and if you haven't already finished reading Through the Looking Glass to him, he would like that. It wasn't "too old" for him, after all.

Last of all, but never least, good-bye, Kate. Of all the people caught in the filthy rain of disappointment that showers down wherever I go, you weigh the worst upon me. Aaron will remember me only as a vague dream, if he does at all. Hurley will never escape from the nightmare of his own mind.

As for you, I've wrecked your life in so many ways stupid, careless, or brutal; when I didn't listen or wasn't there; "for all things done and left undone."

Good-bye, Kate. I'm sorry.

—Jack

* * *

A light knock at the door brought Kate back to the present.

"Kate?" came Claire's voice. "You okay?"

Kate thought about sweeping the letters away, but there was no point. "Come on in."

With clenched fingers, Claire clutched a moleskin journal to her chest. A new one, it looked like. "It's just that it's past midnight. I saw your light was still on, and Mum was worried." Her gaze kept drifting back to the letters.

"I'm fine." No, I'm not, Kate said to herself. Something inside her broke loose and drifted free, along with a small, humorless laugh.

Claire's expression changed to alarm. "Do I have to call Dr. Stillman?"

"I'm not going to do anything, if that's what you mean." Before Claire could voice the question in her eyes, Kate waved towards the pile. "They're from Jack. Margo found them in his things." She hated the tears which stung her eyes, hated her weakness. "They're... hard to read. Brutal."

"I'm sure they are," said Claire. She waited, silent, for Kate to say more.

I can't tell her, not now, Kate thought. Jack's words of despair seemed to burn through the page, as well as through her heart. Still, she tried to sound lighter than she felt. "It's all so pointless, because it's not like I can answer him back, or anything."

Claire bit her lip, pondering before speaking. "You can, you know."

It was almost the last straw. Kate whirled around, face blazing. "I really don't want to hear any of that new-age nonsense—"

"That's not what I meant. You can write him, the same way Dr. Stillman is having me write to... _him_. You know, the one that you shot. Who you and Jack killed." At Kate's silent shock, Claire lifted the notebook. "I've been telling him what I think of him, how mad I am at what he did to me. How I wished I'd have shot him myself."

"Does it help?" Kate whispered. Anything to breach this terrible chasm, with herself on one side and Jack drifting on the other, silent and unreachable.

Claire nodded, full of sympathy. "It really does. Look, I haven't written anything yet in this one, so go ahead and take it."

"I really couldn't..." Even so, Kate's hands reached for the pretty book with its dark blue cover.

"It's no problem. I have more." Claire stood in the doorway, once more giving Kate the chance to open up.

Face still flushed, guts still full of ice, Kate offered up a crumb. "Last December, Jack went to Sydney to find your mom. It sounded like he was going to tell her everything about the Island, you, even Aaron. But your mom was gone."

"Not surprising. After my dad's funeral, Mum moved back to the family farm in Wollondilly."

"Jack couldn't find any of your relatives."

"My uncle, Aunt Lindsey's husband, runs the farm, and it's in his name. Anyway, don't you think you should get some sleep?"

"I can't. There are two to go, and maybe they'll explain why Jack never sent them." And so many other things, as well. Like why he wanted to kill himself, but didn't.

"Well, if you're going to stay up, let me bring you a tray, all right?"

By the time Claire returned, Kate's stomach growled at the sight of warmed-up casserole, a glass of milk, and some apple slices. The fruit reminded her of a child's supper, served by the nanny in the nursery.

As Claire ducked out, she said, "Just leave the door ajar, would you?"

"Sure." Finally alone, she pressed the third letter to her breast and let the tears flow like rain, because she knew, finally, why Jack had been on the overpass on that night when all the news stations had called him a hero.

( _continued_ )


	6. Unmailed Letters 3

**Chapter 6: Unmailed Letters (Part 3)**

12/05/2007

My love,

A woman doesn't say those words to a man unless she knows that he is hers. A man avoids saying them unless he is convinced that he has lost her. As I lost you last night at the Santa Monica marina.

You said that I was insane, crazy, and a week ago I would have agreed with you. But Kate, I've never felt saner. Sad, yes, and still convinced of my worthlessness (of which I am reminded every time I look at your number in my phone) because John did kill himself, and I will go to my grave convinced that had I listened to him, he wouldn't have.

I can't fix that. I can't fix anything, not even myself. Yet something has happened, something momentous, and all I can do is sit in awe of it, because it makes no sense. Crazy, as you would say.

I haven't had any pills for three days, yet there are no tremors, no sweats, no panic attacks. I sail on a glassy, windless sea of calm and my hands don't even shake. It's not supposed to work this way; I've seen neuro patients in the throes of withdrawal, but I feel better than I have in months. By all rights the symptoms should have hit hard by now, but there isn't a single one.

It's like John's compound fracture, only now the witness I bear is in my own flesh.

So here I sit in an empty room that no longer feels like mine, because I can once more see the carpet that was buried under mountains of debris. When I got back at two o'clock this morning, I found a registered letter waiting for me, the one which formally revokes my hospital privileges. The notice of hearing from the California Medical Board to suspend my license will no doubt soon follow. Those who break into a narcotics cabinet and help themselves don't usually get a come-back.

Now it's four in the morning, the hour of the wolf, and I fight the urge to call you. I tell myself that it's better not to; to make a clean break of it. Let you and Aaron get on with your lives with no worry for what little is left of mine.

My job, my license, this condo, none of these things matter any longer. Since you and I will likely never see each other again, this makes you a free woman now, genuinely free in every meaningful sense.

When all of us were traveling to Membata on the _Searcher_ , I asked Desmond once what it was like to make monastic vows, to be willing to relinquish everything; no wife, no child, no money, no property. He casually laughed and said, "When the time is right, brother, you'll just know. I couldn't make it as a monk because those weren't the vows that were meant for me. They were saved for Penny, and somehow I think Brother Campbell knew it."

At the time I scoffed. Now, I sit in my bare rooms and scribble on purloined stationary from the El Dorado Motel, because the cleaning service took mostly everything to storage. Desmond's words echo like a refrain as I take off this life like a wet and dirty coat that no longer fits. It falls to the floor and I kick it aside as I have everything else: the condo; the job which I've almost certainly lost; the awe in people's eyes when I casually let drop that I'm a neurosurgeon. Was a neurosurgeon, just as I used to be your fiancé. All of it gone for the sake of a vow that I didn't even know I was making, until that instant when Ben told me to pack a suitcase because I was never coming back.

All I said, Kate, was "Good." It rang with the same finality as "I do," and was equally as binding, and at some point everyone discovers who or what they will bind themselves to. For my father it was surgery, and for a time, when made to choose between surgery and drink, he picked medicine. For awhile, anyway.

What I failed to understand at the time was that none of these binding choices can be ratified in a vacuum. There is a reason the Episcopal Church at baptism or marriage asks the congregation, "Will you do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?" and the people make their own vow, "We will."

No one does it alone, Kate, but I was too blind to see that. It's why I could never make it far enough with you to become your husband.

My father couldn't do it alone, Kate, and neither could you. Yet you must have felt so alone, pretending to take Aaron to all-day field trips or mom's day out when you were actually driving to Riverside. You never had Clementine or Cassidy at your house, because you didn't want me to meet them. You let me continue in the delusion that Sawyer was here in Los Angeles, or California at least, and that you were seeing him behind my back. And all this happened because of me, because I made it so that you couldn't trust me.

So you hid, and worried, and evaded, and feared me, because I didn't help you. I made you do it alone.

By my fault, by my fault, by my most grievous fault.

*:*:*

I suppose there is no harm at this point in telling you that I have been to see the one person in all of Los Angeles, perhaps in the world, who can return Ben and I to the island.

Perhaps you don't care to hear about the madwoman in the basement with her charts; her spells scrawled in differential calculus; the enormous pendulum that traced its tracks into what felt like my very skin.

Eloise was her name, Eloise Hawking, and if you ever see her, flee, because once her claws embed themselves in your soul you will never be free of the terrible knowledge she weaves of iron threads. No human being should know these things, and yet she does.

The chalk paths of her pendulum intersect at the points where a vow moves from a mere promise to a terrible reality - in short, at the instant where it must be put into practice. Lived up to.

So I make ready to leave on that flight, Kate, and to never return. Perhaps I will die in the new crash that I'm steeling myself to endure. If I survive, I will live out my days on the island, and I can't imagine what that would be like, or understand why I would even have to.

The only thing I understand right now is that I've never understood any of it.

When that bizarre visit was over, Ben sidled up to me and said that he could manage to get you onto that plane, even if you weren't willing. When I didn't say anything, he added, "I won't hurt her."

I remembered how on Hydra Island you tried to hide your chafed wrists from me, how you lied that they hadn't hurt you, how your tears smeared the Plexiglas wall of my cage. Despite the cryptic warnings of the madwoman in the basement about terrible consequences, I told Ben that I would kill him if he even thought about touching you. You were not to be forced.

With a puzzled glance he responded, "Why not?"

"Because I'm not you," I replied.

"So much the worse for us all," he snapped.

It doesn't matter what gets ruined on this mad return flight; let the consequences fall where they may. You were brought on board Oceanic 815 as a prisoner, but you won't depart on Ajira 316 as one.

*:*:*

At the hospital, I used to watch dying patients with their families. Some pretended nothing was wrong, and sat there tight-lipped. Other families poured out their hearts to the dying one, as if trying to cram everything and more into the little time that was left. Sometimes I would stand for a moment outside the hospital room door, riveted in place by these tear-stained confessions, apologies, reconciliations.

They had about as much time to make their last confessions as I do now, so here is mine, my love.

My first: after my father's memorial service, I couldn't look at my nephew Aaron without seeing his mother in his wide blue eyes. I know it would cause you suffering were you to actually read this, because in every sense you are his mother. You nursed him through rotovirus and flu; cleaned off red-jello spit-ups that stained the pale carpet in the den so badly it had to be replaced. You taught him patty-cake and eensy-weensy spider and everything else that I couldn't, because I couldn't bear to see my vanished sister in his eyes.

Or yours.

Because I know she haunted you, too. And that is why I left you that August weekend when the air conditioning broke down, when Aaron cried for hours in the hot desert night from an ear infection.

My next confession: what a coward I am. My mother knows that I've been taking trans-Pacific flights; what she doesn't know is that this will be my last. I can't bear to hear her lecture me on how I need help; how "troubled" or "dysfunctional" my behavior is, or whatever euphemism she uses to paper it over. I can't bear to hear the unspoken word "suicidal" in her voice, see it in her expression.

She will never forgive me in any case, not after losing Dad. After me losing Dad, I should say, by pushing him out of his hard-won sobriety.

Did you know I did that, Kate?

I did the same thing to Sarah that I did with you about Sawyer, only this was worse, more monstrous, because I accused her of sleeping with my father. It seems insane now, because of course she was calling him, confiding in him. Her own father had died shortly after our wedding, and she couldn't talk to me about anything. She feared me, in fact, as she made a point to include in the divorce depositions. Not that I ever laid a hand on her, but she feared what I was doing to her spirit when I made her feel small and diminished; that she had no value other than the trophy patient which I had "fixed" and then married.

Later, my mother told me that Dad had always stuck up for me in those conversations with Sarah. Nonetheless, I accused the two of them of something abominable, just as I did you.

I was so wrong to doubt you. Another man (Hurley, say) would have trusted you, instead of accusing you as I did on the night I left you for the second time. He wouldn't have carried around with him "the shadow of the third," the one I envisioned "always walking beside you" or in your thoughts, dressed in a blue denim shirt instead of "wrapt in a brown mantle."

But Sawyer couldn't have been "the third" I imagined on the telephone, because he's on the island, or so John said. If Sawyer's still alive, that is. We both know how death finds people there.

No, I don't say that to hurt you, although perhaps I do mean to, if only a little. The two of you came together for a time in the Unreal City, after all. But it's an old argument and tiresome, especially when Ben revealed the truth to me.

Ben's men had Cassidy's house in Jurupa Valley under constant surveillance. They watched you come and go, photographed the two of you drinking iced tea on the back deck; watched Clementine push Aaron in the baby swing that Cassidy kept long after Clementine outgrew it. They dug through garbage and identified your payments to the child, via Sawyer's cash and Oceanic settlement accounts.

In a dry voice he remarked that your association with a criminal probably constituted a parole violation, even if technically Cassidy had turned states'-evidence and hadn't been formally indicted. I sat numb during the entire sordid recitation: Sawyer and Cassidy's partnership in crime, the betrayal, his conviction, the child.

His eyes filled with pity and contempt when he saw that I had never known.

Not numb enough to feel shame, however, or the burning embarrassment that you never trusted me enough to tell me about Cassidy, or her. That was your big secret, your "promise to Sawyer:" a little girl, and all you wanted to do was help her.

I can't write any more, because all I can see is your tear-streaked face as you left the marina. Dawn is breaking, but that's at least one advantage of the Unreal City: there's always someplace to get a drink at any hour of the day or night, and God knows I need one.

Jack

:*:*:*:*:*:*:

[The last letter was also written on El Dorado Motel stationery.]

Kate,

Do you remember that LA winter morning shortly after we returned from the island? Fog blanketed a flat beach pockmarked with footprints, nothing like the pristine seacoast we knew so well. But we both craved the smells and sounds of the sea, so you choked down your anxiety over leaving Aaron with my mother, your fears of being recognized, your hesitation over what lay ahead for us.

Hidden by a scarf and dark glasses, you gripped my hand tightly. We walked the strand from Newport to Moro Canyon, talking freely as on those early days after the crash, drunk on the possibility of a fresh start. When a gigantic cliff blocked our path, we laughingly called it "Mt. Hurley" before turning around.

Little did we know.

That afternoon, we lay together for the first time in an anonymous Newport Beach hotel, your face more naked than your body as your nails raked my back and your cries of love burned my ears.

That was the first time. Perhaps last night was the last, perhaps not. This morning, though, there was something final in your voice as you said, "See you at the airport." Damn Ben, for calling right at that last moment. Yes, I know there will be time to talk on the plane. We were in the air about six hours before Oceanic 815 broke up, and one can say a lot in that time.

Long ago, before I left you for the first time, you told me that you and Sawyer had been forced to break rocks for an airstrip on Hydra Island. It was right before Dad's memorial service, so we were still seeing each other almost daily, still together.

I am so sorry that I scoffed at you for that; it is perfectly understandable in retrospect that you never mentioned Sawyer to me again until that fateful night last September. Yes, I was jealous; yes, I resented him - even after that day in Newport Beach, that first time which should have erased everything which came before it, yet did not. Just as last night didn't take the morning-after frost from your voice.

Now, though, I desperately want to believe that the near-primitive Others could actually build a runway which could accommodate an international airliner. Because while I still remain convinced that everyone would be better off without me, I saw how so many died horribly after the 815 crash, and I fear that kind of death by fire more than any other. More so even than how the federal marshal lay dying in a putrid, septicemic swamp.

I'm afraid, Kate.

As I write, advancing morning sun burns off the glow of your body under mine, banishing all freedom from worry with its harsh light. I'm afraid, and counting to five won't help, because there aren't enough numbers to carry me through this horrible plodding death march. John's body has to be fetched from a butcher shop - nothing better to remind us that we're all meat dressed up in a few pretensions - and then to the airport, where all that meat stands to get roasted to a well-done crisp.

Please, for the love of God, get us to the island, but not by a crash. Please spare me from a crash, because I don't want to experience that again, no matter how many times I wished for it over the past weeks. Spare us both, because I don't want you to suffer that way, either.

I wish I could care more about those who will fill this flight. My words of last month come back to haunt me like a death sentence, when I said to you, "I want the plane I'm on to crash... I pray that it will crash." I know that Ben doesn't care either; he's said as much. Hurley might see it differently if he were boarding this ship of the damned, but as far as I know he is still in jail.

It speaks volumes, Kate, that I can't even worry about Hurley any longer. Mentally ill prisoners are often rushed to St. Sebastian's ER when they're attacked; I've seen my share. They're sitting ducks, Kate; I can't bring myself to think about it further.

So while I wanted to drive you to the airport, share some light conversation and prolong the afterglow, it didn't work out that way. Add it to the pile of things I'm sorry for, things done and left undone, as ultimately pointless as that enormous stack of notebooks we found on the island, a stack that has haunted my dreams for years because they perfectly symbolize the hopeless futility that has become my life.

Even though I hope that you won't hold any of this against me, I thoroughly expect that you will. That's all right. I love you more than I can tell, even though I make you unhappy. As you yourself said, "Why hold on to something that makes you feel sad?"

Both of us are casting aside those things that make us feel sad, aren't we? You didn't have to tell me where you left Aaron; it was perfectly obvious. Ben confirmed it on the phone early this morning, when he told me that Carole Littleton had canceled her return flight to Sydney and was remaining in Los Angeles. (How does he discover these things? Never mind; it had the ring of truth.)

Aaron was another one of those sources of sadness, wasn't he? Just as I am.

It's all right, Kate. It's going to be all right. See you at the airport.

Your old pair of shoes,

Jack

( _continued_ )

 **(A/N: "The shadow of the third," the one "on the other side of you... wrapt in a brown mantle," and the Unreal City are all from TS Eliot's poem, "The Waste Land.")**


	7. King of Coins

**Chapter 7: King of Coins**

A week had passed since Claire had given the blue journal to Kate. She kept wanting to ask her if she'd written anything in it, but something about Kate's closed, withdrawn face made her think it wouldn't be a good idea. What made it worse was how she couldn't stop thinking that maybe she hadn't given Kate an empty journal at all. Damn these meds, messing with her short-term memory the way they did.

Now, on this bright morning Aaron frolicked outside with Mum, rolling around on the grass like a puppy. Kate passed through the kitchen and gave Claire a brief nod. She peeked at Aaron through the wide glass sliding door, poured herself some coffee, then headed back to her room without saying anything else to Claire.

Claire darted to her own room, and rummaged through a stack of notebooks, some well-worn and full of writing, others with half-starts that got laid aside. She flipped through one after another, fighting down panic over having given Kate the wrong book. So much poison from deep inside got poured into those pages. Sometimes she'd let Dr. Stillman read a passage, but any of it bothered him, he never showed it. Kate, though... what if Claire had screwed up, and the contagion inside Claire spread to Kate, and even to Aaron?

This was her own stupid fault, wasn't it? The notebooks in the shop had been all laid out on the display by colors: red, black, yellow, even a shiny gold one that she had rested her fingers on for a few seconds before pulling back, as if the gleaming color had burned her. It seemed almost a sacrilege to buy something so nice for herself, if all she would fill it with was writing black as smoke. So she had left with a box of the blue notebooks instead.

Claire knew that words had power – she had learned that the hard way, in her three years a prisoner on the Island. Enough was enough. She couldn't let that happen.

She had given Kate an empty one, right? Probably.

 _But maybe not_ , something answered back.

 _I could go ask her_ , she argued.

 _You could. But then you'd have to admit that you didn't remember. That you weren't careful. That you're still fogged up. Not right in the head. And if you're that fogged, that careless, that mental, can you even be trusted around a child_ —

"Oh, bugger right off," she told herself out loud, then clapped her hand over her mouth. That's all she needed, for someone else to hear.

She crept up to Kate's door. The crack beneath was unlit, so maybe she'd gone back to bed. Torn with indecision, Claire stood perfectly still, her muscles still trained from years of solitary jungle life. She had learned to crouch behind bushes in complete silence as she watched the grey forbidding face of the Temple for a glimpse of a little blond child, a glimpse that never came.

Claire couldn't bring herself to bother Kate. She was already such a nuisance, such a bother to everyone. Had to be driven to therapy or the chemist's because she had no California license, and these crazy Yank roads were all backwards anyway. Aaron's sweet "Mommy Claire" rang in her ears, but "Mommy" was still reserved for Kate alone, and probably always would be. Mum did her best to help run things, but Claire could see the fatigue in her face when she thought no one was looking.

Well, it would just make it worse if Kate caught her lurking in the corridor. She wandered back towards the front of the house, when a bright silvery gleam from the foyer caught her eye. The sunlight pouring through the glass of the front door lit up something metallic and glittering, that rested on top of a small bookshelf. It shone like a tiny star, pulling Claire forward as she went to investigate.

It was a quarter. She picked it up, glad that she had found it before Aaron, as he was still a bit young to be entirely trusted around coins. While Mum had been keeping care of him during Kate's return to the Island, Aaron had one time put a penny in his mouth, wanting to see if it tasted like cinnamon candy.

The coin was warm as blood in her hand, but that should be no surprise, bathed as it was in morning sunlight. During his last visit, Hurley had done some coin tricks for Aaron, deftly turning the coin this way and that with his big, surprisingly graceful fingers. He had answered Aaron's laughter with boyish smiles that turned shy when he looked over at her. They hadn't sat on the couch together for very long, but even in that short interval the fear and anxiety receded for a little, like low tide at the beach.

Like the tide, the anxiety returned after he'd gone. Even so, with the coin nestled in her hand, she felt it recede a little. Ebb, flow, ebb, moving as the moon did in the great wheel of its journey round the earth.

Hurley must have left it there on his way out the door.

Back in her room, Claire set the coin on the one bare spot on her messy desk. When she slid open the long floor-to-ceiling window, cool morning air ruffled the gauze curtains and stirred up some loose papers on the floor.

Shivering a little, she thought of searching through her notebooks again, but the compulsion was gone. Instead, she opened a tin of paints and began to dab green and brown watercolors onto a page, roughly outlining the branches outside her window.

By the time she finished the painting, most of the worry had leached out of her. So what if the book wasn't empty? she asked herself. Kate had her own sorrows, missing Jack the way she did. For Claire, it wasn't so simple. Even though Jack had known she was his sister, he had left her at John's camp. It was Claire who faced down Sawyer to let her come with them, Kate who had brought Kate home. Not Jack.

Could she blame him, really? She wouldn't want herself for a sister, either. Not now. As for Kate, Jack would be far more on her mind than any scribbling of Claire's. And if worst came to worst, she could just apologize for not giving Kate a new book. It would be all right.

"It'll be all right," Claire repeated to herself.

A footstep creaked in the hallway, and through the half-open bedroom door Kate said, "Claire, you in there? Thought I heard something."

Feeling caught, Claire flung her brush into the water-jar. "What? Oh, hey." When Kate didn't answer, she added, "Come on in."

Kate stood as she had since she'd returned a week ago from Margo's, her haunted thoughts far away. She hadn't said much more about Jack's letters, and Claire hadn't asked. Three of Jack's Pacific Ocean maps were tacked to Claire's wall, though, and Claire marked Kate's gaze at it traveled over them.

Finally Kate spoke. "Well... I was just headed to my room. Taking advantage of a few free moments."

"I'll get him settled when he comes in. He'll be fine."

Something hung in the air between them. If anything was going to come out, it would be now. The moment passed as Kate's face relaxed. "Thanks." She glanced over to the open window. "Kind of chilly in here, isn't it?"

"I like the fresh air. Want Mum and I to call you for lunch, at least?"

"That'd be great."

Claire sat back in her desk chair, gazing at the spot in the doorway where Kate no longer was. She thought of pulling on a sweater, but instead let the coolness flow over and through her. On her desk the silver quarter glittered, even in shadow. Slowly she reached her hand towards it, then hesitated. It was as if everything depended on her hand moving that one last fraction of distance. A thread of anticipation stitched its way through her as she pushed her hand a bit forward, and seized the coin.

It still glowed against her skin, and the warmth comforted her like afternoon sunshine.

During her first year alone in the jungle, Claire had learned how to test plants to see if they were safe to eat. First she would lick an unbroken leaf. If her tongue tingled or burned, she would set the leaf aside. If nothing happened, she would break it and try again, then eat a tiny bit, and so on. Sometimes it made her terribly sick, but most times it worked. Test everything; that was the lesson to learn if you wanted to stay alive.

She could put the coin in the refrigerator and come back an hour later to see if it was still warm. Or she could call Kate in, have her feel it as well. Or she could accept that she was mad as a March hare.

No, she told herself. Maybe none of these paths were the correct one. She didn't need to test anything; that wasn't the point. Maybe the coin would cool; maybe it wouldn't. Nor was she mad. Hurt, wounded, yes. Scarred for sure. But as she placed the small bit of metal up against her cheek, a tiny point of brightness glimmered out to sea like a lighthouse's lamp. Maybe some of her old self was left after all, and if she was lucky, she might even get a fraction of it back.

* * *

Settled in her own room, Kate looked through the window at Aaron and Carole playing ring-toss. A surge of grateful emotion made her eyes sting. Maybe it was time to let Claire step in more. In the past few weeks, Claire seemed to be gathering her forces, growing in strength while she herself shook under the burden of Jack's letters.

Kate shut the door and sat before her own bare desk, the blue notebook in front of her. Every day of the past week she had almost touched her pen to its unmarked pages, then put the pen down. If she opened the dam's sluice gate to let out the flow of words, when or how would it ever stop?

Maybe it was time to find out.

*:*:*

Jack, you bastard,

Look, I get why you stayed on the island. I don't have to like it. I don't have to understand it. But I get it. What I don't get, and what I maybe can't even forgive, is why you never told me any of this.

Were you afraid to say it to my face? Sure, I got angry. Sure, I called you crazy, because all of this was crazy from the very beginning. Sure, I didn't want to hear any of it.

Here I am, blaming you for something I never wanted to hear in the first place.

But we were on that island for two weeks. We sat on opposite sides of the same cafeteria table one morning after another. Later, we slept in the jungle with a campfire in between us, and you never said a word. Not one! It was like everything that we had between us had never happened. All that was left was silence.

The worst part was that it wasn't a cold, empty silence. You always looked like you were listening to something I couldn't hear, no matter how much I strained or tried. Sometimes I would watch you in the early morning fog, when you thought I was asleep. You sat with your hands folded on your knees, and I wondered if you had even slept at all, as you stared out into the jungle.

On the last day of your life you stood knee-deep in that river, farther away than ever. If you had only heard whispers before, by then you must have been tuned in to a whole symphony.

At that moment I hated the island, hated what you were listening to, and while it hurts so much to write this, I hated you. When Sawyer came up and started joking about Moses and burning bushes, I wanted to blow you both out of the river right then and there. Hurley, too, when later he made some snide remark about how I was being "too sweet."

All of you let me down: the people I had been closest to except for Claire, and she tried to kill me! All of you left me, in one way or another, and I was expected to just absorb it. Take it like a good girl, because that's what all you big strong men wanted.

Howitzer, hell. If I could have set off Jughead myself and sent the whole damn place straight to the bottom of the ocean, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

Oh you cowardly, beautiful bastard, you couldn't even tell me what you knew all along – that you were never coming back. Because you were 100% right not to tell me. If I had known that the choice would have been between Claire and you, would I have done the right thing?

Hell no, I wouldn't have. I thought we were both going back to the island to get Claire, to bring her back to be with Aaron. That we could get her some therapy, let her live with us, that maybe I wouldn't have to give up Aaron for good after all.

For a week in Locke's camp, every night I lay rolled up in a filthy blanket, Sawyer on the other side of the fire snoring so loud that it kept me awake. That was a joke, because he was supposed to be my watchdog, keeping me safe from Claire, who he thought was going to try and stab me again.

So while Sawyer snored, I was the one lying awake, staring up at the stars winking through the treetops, telling myself happy stories how you and I were going to get back to Los Angeles and make all those dreams come true.

But the one thing the island asked of me – would I have done it, had it been up to me?

I almost scratched this out because it's so easy to fall into the same crazy-talk trap. What the island asked? God, I'm starting to sound like John Locke. Or Hurley, when you told me about him yelling that "it" wanted us to go back.

Or you.

There's no way I could have done it on my own. But I did, didn't I? What choice did you give me?

"Get Claire on that plane." "No," I should have screamed. "You want her on that plane, you drag her yourself." The same way you said that Ben wanted to drag me onto Ajira 316.

But maybe you knew this already, knew you had to stay on the island, knew that it had to be me. Because after that one outburst, Claire followed me like a lamb everywhere. Anyone else: Frank, Richard, Sawyer – especially Sawyer – she would have fought like a trapped wildcat.

As I read this over, I hate that I wrote it. Claire hasn't fought anyone since we got separated from her on that submarine dock, where she gave us enough cover to get away. She bottles up her terrors inside, where they burst out once in awhile in nightmares. Or she saves it up for Dr. Stillman. I can't miss her red eyes and flushed cheeks when Carole drives her back from therapy.

After we moved into the safe house, we put her bed directly on the floor because otherwise she would sleep under it.

You should see her with Aaron now. We were all so worried at first: her mom, yours, me, even Dr. Stillman from Santa Rosa had his doubts. No, he doesn't call her "Mom." Mostly she's like a beloved preschool teacher or a favorite fun aunt, while I am still doing most of the work.

That sounds ungrateful and sullen, I know. She cries alone in her room at night because no one knows how to tell Aaron that she's really his mother, or whether we even should.

This is what you left me with, Jack. The walls of this house close in around us, squeezing us under all these stifled feelings, choking us in an air of upset and sensitivity, waiting for one bomb or another to go off.

I'm so tired from all of this, so exhausted at having to clean up the emotional messes that you left. And yes, some of that was me. I will admit that, hard as it is.

We're going to move to another safe house soon, this one up in the mountains above the Malibu coast. An old ranch or summer camp, so Hurley said. I don't know how just changing our address will help any of this. Yet I went along with it, and I still don't know why.

What did you do to Hurley, Jack? I barely recognize him. Three years ago he couldn't introduce himself to me without babbling like a middle school kid. Six months ago I couldn't even visit him because he was in a locked psych ward. Now he acts like you did in those few days before you got yourself killed, like he's always listening to some kind of music, or voices in the air.

You want to know what I did when he told me you had died? I was the perfect little girl in your mother's living room, hands folded in my lap while I was screaming inside. I drank the tea she served us, choked down a few biscotti, and when Hurley got up to leave, I followed him to his car.

Around back of your mother's beautiful house, I started hitting him. Not slapping him like a girl does when she wants a man to pay attention to her, but throwing real punches, one after another at his chest and arms. It was horrible because while you know all I've done in my time, I've never done something like that, and to Hurley of all people.

That's not the worst of it. With each punch I yelled, "It should have been you. It should have been you." I could see Margo and Claire both crying their eyes out as they stared at us through the kitchen's rear window.

In between punches I thought how glad I was that I'd left Aaron at home with Veronica, because I couldn't have lived if he'd seen me like that.

Hurley just stood there and took it, silent and tearful. Finally my arms fell to my sides from exhaustion. I was so ashamed, I wanted to sink right down into the cracks between the paving stones.

He sat down on a stone bench. Didn't say he understood, or how it was all going to be okay, or how sorry he was for me. When I rushed over to him to apologize he put up his hand and said, "No, Kate." I felt sick because I thought he was going to tell me to go to hell, that he'd drive away and never come back. That he'd hate me forever.

"No, Kate," he said again. "If you touch me, it might go away. I don't really know how it works yet."

"What might go away?" But as I said it, I knew. "It" – all that anger and pain because you, Jack, had left me in the worst, most public and embarrassing way possible, in front of Ben, Hurley, Sawyer, God and everybody.

"I don't care," I said. The only thing that mattered was that I hadn't broken anything else, like I'd wrecked so much before.

When he stood up and took me in his arms, it was like being smothered in pillows. I was still mad as a hornet's nest, still full of hatred and resentment. But the shame was gone. For a minute there I turned into Aaron when he had one of those tantrums. Do you remember how badly they scared us at first? Hurley was the mother full of patience, and I was the toddler who had collapsed into exhaustion.

I still hated Hurley, still hated you for leaving me, most of all hated the island for sinking its claws into all of us. But something loosened up inside, and at least I could breathe.

Like I'm breathing now. But I still haven't forgiven you for leaving.

—Kate

( _continued_ )


	8. Letters to Jack

**Chapter 8: Letters to Jack**

Jack,

Right before the move to Malibu Springs, I looked over what I'd written and almost tore it to pieces. Even though I hated the house on the hill and couldn't wait to leave it, packing was hopeless. All I could do was re-read harsh words which leaped out at me, as if someone was hitting me over and over and I couldn't get away. Claire must have heard me sobbing, because she walked right in and sat down like she was the big sister and I the little one who needed a firm talking-to.

She showed me her old diary from over three years ago, before the crash. She'd hung on to it through everything, and even managed to find it again after being taken by the smoke thing to live in that filthy hovel.

The little blue journal helped her to remember who she was, she explained. Inside, words were written in such anger that she'd practically punched holes into the paper. A taped-in picture of her old boyfriend had the face scratched out. Little sketches of knives dripped blood onto his name, or onto the curses she used to describe him.

"It's the most precious thing I have," Claire said to me. "Don't tear out those pages, Kate."

So I haven't. Instead, I'm doing something completely crazy. I'm writing to you as if you had just gone on a long journey to somewhere on the other side of the planet, somewhere so far out of reach that you might as well be dead.

You'd like where we're living. Richard Alpert came down from Portland to help us settle into this old summer camp run by his company, Mittelos Laboratories. It doesn't faze me at all to think of Richard as some big-shot executive, because we saw him in action during the weeks we were waiting to get back into the United States. So I didn't even blink when he showed up with a crew of movers, looking elegant in a sharkskin suit and an $800 silk tie.

Mittelos Summer Camp was here even before the Dharma Initiative ever came to the island, because the Others were always looking for new recruits. As Richard described it, the camp was like a six-week-long audition for a play. The real performance started when, rarely, a few campers got invited on a one-way trip to the island.

Richard was so friendly and helpful that I didn't have the heart to ask what Mittelos told the parents when their kids didn't return.

It took some time and a lot of lawyers, but now Hurley owns all of Mittelos: the sprawling Portland headquarters where Richard works, the factories in north Africa, and the aviation company that keeps Frank busy flying scientists and finance people to and fro. Or not really Hurley, exactly: more like this giant not-for-profit foundation which he and his mother set up. As Richard droned on about the details, my head started to whirl. It's almost all too much to take in.

Claire didn't even listen, just tended to Aaron while the movers unloaded boxes, while Carole, Carmen and Margo fussed over where everything was to supposed to go. I don't think Hurley's money interests her, even though it provides for this place where she seems to feel safe for the first time in a long while.

A woman named Jill has moved up here to work the kitchen for all of us. While we have kitchenettes in the cabins, they're more for making coffee or frying up an egg. Dinners are served just like at summer camp, and we all help. Most of the day, though, Jill goes to work at her butcher shop down in the valley. She has offered to take Claire with her sometime, show her how to butcher, but I suspect Claire already knows how.

Sitting in my cabin, I can pretend I'm inside a living tree, surrounded by golden wood on walls and floor. Above, thick cross-beams hold up the paneled roof over a room with a bed in one corner and tiny kitchenette in the other. The entry door is so short that your head would almost scrape the top. Tiny windows keep out the summer heat, and in the dim light the cabin is like something out of a fairy tale.

Claire's cabin is right next to mine, and we both have set up an extra bed for Aaron. He bounces back and forth, as much at home in either place.

At night I step outside into almost-dark, where Los Angeles hides on the other side of the mountains, invisible except for where it edges the ridge tops with light. Along the foothills, everything is black in the nearby state forest, which gives the place an eerily quiet and remote feeling.

I want you here with me so badly. We never took a real vacation, not after Laguna Beach, and this place would be perfect. If I could only show you this golden room, or the desk where I write this, the furniture all hand-made of the same warm-colored oak as the rest of the cabin. Or lie with you on the full-size bed and...

Never mind. That hurts too much, because it reminds me of one night. One last, perfect night that arrived only once and will never appear again. It's cruel that I am here without you. Maybe, just maybe, if we had visited here before "we had to go back," I might have been way more likely to listen to you. That's ridiculous, isn't it?

Kate

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Jack the silent,

Don't laugh, but I have a therapist now. Three times a week I drive down to Thousand Oaks and meet with her in a shabby little strip-mall office. Her name is Susan, Susan Lazenby, and she used to work at the hospital where we went to visit Hurley. Until we stopped, that is, and I'm still bitter about that. Her patients are mostly the ones from Santa Rosa who were able to leave the hospital. Needless to say, Hurley helped her set up her own office.

She remembers you from those Santa Rosa visits, how stiff and uncomfortable you looked. How Hurley's symptoms seemed to you like a personal slap in the face, how his inability to get better was an insult directed against you.

It's not clear how much she knows about the island, and I haven't asked. But her wise expression speaks volumes.

The island isn't the point, though, is it? She explained how losing you was a terrible shock, and that such shocks are like broken limbs. If you don't set them so they heal straight, they'll become crooked and painful, and may never work properly again. She says that I have gone through something as serious as multiple broken limbs, and I wouldn't let those heal on their own.

When I snapped that if a horse breaks a leg like that, we just put it down, she became very serious and gave me that don't-do-anything-rash look.

I told her not to be ridiculous. That I had a son.

Instead of arguing that Aaron wasn't really mine, she just leaned back in her office chair and nodded. She knows about the lie etched into Aaron's birth certificate. She knows that I would never make him lose me just as he lost you.

Susan and I talk a lot about loss, and grief, and hope, although that comes more from her than from me.

If you could only see Aaron. Carole gave him a little wire box with a hinged lid, and in it he traps crickets or little toads, just to look at them. Unlike the safe house, which was covered by desert and rock and loneliness, this mountainside teems with life. Its thick carpet of yellow or purple flowers draws swarms of bees. After Aaron watches his bugs for ten minutes or so, I convince him to let them go by telling him they need to head home for their naps.

He is so gentle with them, Jack. Once he broke a cricket's wing by accident and cried for a quarter hour. When I told Susan, I couldn't hold back my own tears, especially the part about lying to him about the bug's fate. "Let's let the cricket go," I told him. It will get better on its own," when I knew full well that it would die.

We haven't yet told him that you died, either.

It's just after sundown. I wish you could see the fireflies as they dot the hillside. I miss you so much.

Kate

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Non-existent Jack,

I don't believe you're here, or even can be. I don't believe you're anywhere, because like animals we go to ground and turn to fertilizer when we die. Fertilizer exactly like the steaming piles I muck out of the stables every day, while two horses watch me with curious interest.

One is a twelve-year old Haflinger named Cobbie, one of the sweetest and gentlest horses I've ever met. I've already taken Aaron around the ring on him several times. Old Joe is a warmblood with some Percheron or Belgian in there, but nobody seems to know for sure. At 15 he's slow, deliberate and very calm. When Claire first saw him she called him a "Hurley horse," because of his curly chestnut mane and thick body.

Sometimes when I'm grooming Cobbie, I just lay my cheek up against his flank. He stands very still, as if he knows that I need him to not do anything except breathe. He seems to understand.

It still irks me that I gave Hurley such a hard time about helping run the stables. Hurley knew that as soon as I saw these two beautiful creatures and this lovely place set up for them, that I would fall in love.

He must have gotten the satellite phone system up and running, because he called last night. He sounded garbled, as if underwater, and there was a brief uncomfortable silence in between each sentence as the signal bounced from one satellite to the next till it reached us.

Businesslike and almost brusque, he wanted to know how everything was going, was there anything I needed and if so, not to pay for it out of my own pocket, but make sure it got charged to the foundation. As he went from one point to the next, I felt like he was treating me as the honorary "man of the house."

A long time ago Sun told me something from her art history courses. In the Middle Ages in Europe, if a guild artisan died, his widow sometimes took over for him. In a way she was treated as if she was him. I think Hurley talks to me as if I were you, because you are gone.

When I handed the phone to Claire, she sat very still and cradled it, bent over as if wanting to dive into the device itself. Trying hard not to listen in, I went out to the front porch, but through the open door her voice drifted out anyway. She told him how she's finally run a clothesline, started a sourdough for baking bread, and today had planted some hot peppers in the garden. It sounded soothing and ordinary and to be honest, boring.

Sometimes she fell into a listening silence broken only by murmurs of "Great," or "Good idea." When Claire came out to the porch and handed my phone back to me, she was smiling.

I don't feel as if I'll ever smile again.

Kate

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Dear Jack,

Carole has moved into one of the lakeside cabins, where she casts her fishing line from the dock. The summer-camp kids must have once jumped into this chilly lake, fed by a large bubbling spring halfway up the hillside.

Claire and her mother take it all in stride, but I chafe at all this generosity. Since it comes from Hurley there's no catch, but I'm still braced for one. Susan says that I can't force trust; it just has to grow naturally out of one good experience after another.

She said that I don't think I deserve good things. That came up in two whole sessions devoted all to you, about how I didn't feel that I deserved you, how sometimes you made that worse even though you might not have meant to.

We've all felt so worthless, all of us: Hurley in the hospital when he wouldn't let his parents visit him because he didn't want to show himself crying and hallucinating round the clock. Claire when she didn't want to inflict herself on Aaron, still believing what that creature had told that she'd been left behind because no one cared enough to try and find her.

Me, when I felt so filthy after Mom blamed me for Wayne's disgusting remarks and side-looks, her crude remark about "leading him on." Not even an acid bath could wash that shame off.

As I told Susan that, her calm and professional facade cracked and her face grew dark red with anger. "You were a girl," she said through gritted teeth. "Just a girl."

She says that I am under no obligation to see Mom or communicate with her in any way, even if she did drop the charges. Even if she is in hospice care now, and that means she probably has only a few months.

Then there's you, Jack. Deep down you probably felt that you were the most worthless of us all. Because Claire, and Hurley, and me – we all continued to cling to life.

You, though, let yours go.

I can't bear to leave this letter on that note, though. So here is something for you, courtesy of Claire. You and I used to read to Aaron every night or before his naps, and we even had those waterproof books to take into the bath. Between the two of us, Aaron was immersed in a world of brightly-colored and happy stories, and I was so proud of that, even if I could never make up stories for him on my own.

Claire, though, in ten minutes she can weave a tale seemingly out of nothing. Recently she's been telling him this one, and finally I asked her to write it down. I'm taping it into this letter so you can see how much of your father's storytelling has passed on to her.

Every night Aaron listens to it, never bored.

 _Once upon a time there was a little boy named Aaron, who every day went to pasture the sheep on the side of a mountain. Every day he had to stay awake and watch, so that the sheep would be safe._

 _But one day the sun was so high in the sky, the breezes were so warm, and the bees buzzed so loudly in the clover, that little Aaron fell asleep._

 _And while he was asleep, the side of the mountain opened up, and out came the little men who live under there. They picked Aaron up and took him into the mountain with them._

 _Down they went, past the mines where they dug for jewels as big as eggs, down through twisty passages, over black underground rivers, until they came to the Hall of the Mountain King._

 _When Aaron woke up, at first he was frightened to see all the dwarfs together in the big feasting hall. Especially startling was the great King himself, a huge dwarf the size of a man, who sat on a golden throne covered with sparkling jewels._

 _But the dwarfs made so merry with the pipe and the lute, and there were so many cakes and pies to eat, so many morsels of chicken and roasted meat, that Aaron soon forgot his fear._

 _The mountain men put a chain of gold around Aaron's neck. They gave him a sceptre with a green jewel on one end, and a magic purse for wishes. Whatever you wanted, you could reach in and there it was._

 _All the music and cakes, the singing and dancing made Aaron's eyes droop and then close. When he awoke, he found himself once again on the hillside. The sun was low in the sky, so Aaron ran to and fro, gathering the sheep until every one was gathered into the little flock and tucked into the fold before nightfall. The bolt on the gate went 'click' just as the sun went down._

 _As Aaron's mother gave him his supper of cheese, brown bread, and warm milk, she said, 'Where have you been?'_

 _Aaron told her all about the Hall of the Mountain King, and his presents._

 _'Oh, you mean this vine around your neck? And the stick you use to drive the sheep?'_

 _'But there was something else,' Aaron said. 'A bag full of wishes!' And from his pocket he drew out a little bird's nest._

 _Then his mother kissed him, and he said his prayers, and went straight to bed._

The first time Aaron heard this story, he fretted over any baby birds that might have been in the nest. Claire told him no, they had all long since grown up and flown away.

After he and Claire went to bed and I knew they couldn't hear me, I cried for Claire and all the years with him that she had lost. For myself, too, because I traded your sister's life for yours. Now the little Aaron-bird has flown away from the nest I made for him, the beautiful one that was purely an illusion.

And nothing new: I cried for you. It always comes back to you, doesn't it? I'm convinced that you're gone forever, while at the same time I do stupid things like taping Claire's story into this journal, as if somehow you'll magically be able to read it. I suppose it's not any crazier than anything else we've been through.

Love, love, oh my love,

Kate

( _continued_ )


	9. Letters to Hurley

**Chapter 9: Letters to Hurley**

Hurley,

Last time you rang up, you said that I could write to you whenever I wanted, about anything I wanted. Sorry I sounded cross when I asked how that could even happen, given there are no post boxes on the island, right? Later I realised that of course you weren't going to explain it over the phone.

Just as you said, Richard's letter came the next day by overnight post. No news of him or Sawyer, only a slip of paper with a PO Box number on it. So if you want to hear from crabby old me, here I am.

I know it's been a fortnight since our conversation, but it's been hard for me to start this letter and just spit it right out. While I am terribly grateful for everything you've done for all of us, there's no sense in putting up false pretenses. I am a terrible person, Hurley, one who has done terrible things. I'm half-crazy and there are still nights when I cry myself to sleep over what a mess everything is. What a mess I am.

Over the years, hatred became an ingrained habit of mine. Not a day went by that I didn't want to burn that Temple to the ground, or wish I'd blown up that chopper myself. What made it worse was when 'my friend' described how happy everyone looked as they climbed on board.

'Perhaps they didn't care for you as much as you thought, Claire,' he said before swirling away into the forest, leaving me alone with tears made of thick, black hatred.

It took awhile for me to bring this up with Dr Stillman. When I did, he told me of this old medical-school teacher who had been a US Army doctor in the Korean War. One day while helping some wounded soldiers, he was captured and thrown into a prison camp.

His teacher liked to think of himself as a good person, but it was his hate which kept him alive during that dreadful time. Then Dr. Stillman made a strange remark, that what had happened on the island was like a war too, and I just happened to get caught behind enemy lines. Like his old teacher, people do what they have to in order to survive. And sometimes that means feeding on anger, or even hatred.

Do you still want to write to me, knowing this?

Claire

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Dear Claire,

Yes I still want to write you. I know about hatred, take my word for it. For others and for myself. Being ashamed, too, like not wanting to tell people I was in the mental hospital, or why.

I don't do a good job at writing and it is easier for me to call, but I will try to do both. Thing is, to call LA or Portland I have to climb up this high, high hill in order to get a satphone signal. Climbing hills is not hard for me like it used to be, but if it is raining and lightning, the phone might not work anyways. Even after that long climb. Also, while I know that the lightning can't hurt me, it is still kind of scary.

Ben wants some of the guys to build a shelter for me up there. Everyone already has so much to do and I don't want to make extra work for people, but that doesn't bother Ben. If something needs to be done, Ben just finds someone to do it.

You are not a terrible person and I hope Dr. Stillman keeps telling you that. I used to say the same things about myself but he never let me get away with it. It didn't get to him, either, not like it got to Dr. Brooks. I am glad Dr. Brooks retired and you have Dr. Stillman instead, because he is easy going. Even though I gave him a bad time at the end there.

Dr. Stillman was also right about it being a war. But the war is over now. The worst thing that has happened on the island so far is that those goats I brought from LA always get into the vegetable patches. Oh yeah, there isn't any milk yet either, since they haven't had their kids.

Or I get rained on when I use the satphone. But it is worth it to talk to you and Kate and Aaron.

Your friend,

Hurley

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Hurley,

You asked on the phone how Kate was 'really doing.' Is that because she's not telling you? Despite talking for an hour, even though half of the time it was, 'Sorry, I didn't catch that,' and 'It sounds like you're underwater?' Oh, that seems so bitter and mean and jealous. But like I said, no false pretences.

This afternoon something big happened: Kate got the legal business worked out with her probation — no more of it! She brought home a bottle of Glenfiddich, and she, Mum, Margo, Jill and I had a little party. Well, not Jill or me. Dr Stillman is weaning me from meds, so the only Scotch for me is butterscotch. And one of Jill's jobs around here is driver. Kate, Mum and Margo were having a blast, though.

After Mum went to bed and Jill drove Margo home, I brought up something with Kate that had been bothering me for a long time. During the time she was in 'my friend's' camp, before we flew back on the Ajira plane, had he had ever offered her anything special? Tried to make some kind of deal with her?

He would do that with everyone he met, like making that false promise to get Aaron back. He had offered Sayid something, too, but Sayid would never say what it was. And I didn't hear the whole conversation between him and Jack, but it wouldn't have surprised me had he tried to bribe Jack as well.

Kate looked a bit surprised, and said No, he hadn't. Not that it would have mattered, she added, because there was nothing in this world he could offer her.

Especially with Aaron. Because unlike me, Kate couldn't be beaten about the ears over Aaron. When she decided to return to the island, she had already given Aaron over to Mum and resigned herself to maybe never seeing him again. She would always love him, she said, but bringing him to Mum meant she had 'let go.' There was nothing in the Aaron department to use as a lever against her.

Then the floodgates opened, and it all poured out. What did she want? she said. For Jack not to be broken. That he wouldn't have washed down pills with vodka, which made him yell at her about Aaron (oh, it hurt to hear that, you can't imagine.) That our father would have loved him. That Jack could have loved her plainly and simply, with no complications. And worst of all, that when Jack suddenly wasn't broken any more — when he became loving and selfless and sacrificing — he offered himself up to the island instead of her.

I don't think 'my friend' could ever understand Kate's relationship with Jack. Because when a man says to a woman in exasperation, 'Just what is it that you want?' and the woman answers, 'I just want you to love me,' well, to 'my friend' that wouldn't have meant much. Siring a child, founding a dynasty, collecting jewels, money, power — all those he could understand. But to make Jack and Kate two entirely different people, so that Jack could love Kate in the way she wanted to be loved, and that Kate could accept that love — well, that's a whole lifetime's work, isn't it?

What Kate wanted wasn't in his power to grant.

Now comes the hard part, that I don't want to write but must. Did 'my friend' ever tried to bribe you in any way? After all, you did come into our camp of your own accord. You did let him talk to you.

This is why I ask. When we marched through the jungle, you and Jack sounded like you were arguing, although I couldn't make out all the words. Whatever Jack wanted, you went along with it, because the next minute your back disappeared into the trees right along with Jack's leaving me behind once more.

All I could think was that maybe your warm hug and 'You look great' didn't mean so much after all. Maybe he had offered you something, and you were heading off to get it, and leaving me behind.

Is that true, Hurley? Don't lie to me; I've been lied to for so long, so many times.

Claire

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Claire, listen. This is really important.

As soon as I got this letter I went to call you, but halfway up the mountain the weather got crazy. Mud was sliding down the trail and I couldn't even get to the top. This morning I tried again but there were fallen trees all over the trail. Sometimes I think this island has a mind of its own. Since it would take two days to hike around the cliff face, I am writing you instead.

I would never, ever lie to you. You have to believe that.

No, the smoke monster didn't offer me anything. Smokey Locke barely talked to me after we got to his camp. All he was interested in was Jack. It was like I wasn't even there.

Yes to your other question. I did follow Jack when he wanted to ditch you. There is no way to make up for that, but maybe I can explain.

Two years at Santa Rosa gave me a lot of time to think about all the ways I messed up on the island. Numero uno was when I went with Locke to the Barracks, when the freighter wasn't Penny's boat. You came with us and that was awesome, but it also got you kidnapped. If I hadn't picked Locke and had just gone back to the beach with Jack like he wanted, you would of been safe there. We would have been the Oceanic 7 instead of 6. You would of been with Aaron.

When Dr. Stillman was my shrink, he said I blamed myself for things that weren't my fault. But this thing was. I wish it hadn't happened that way when you and me went to the Barracks. I wish I had trusted Jack.

So when Jack wanted me to sneak away from Locke and help with Sawyer's plan, it was like having to decide all over again. I went with Jack and that was that.

You don't need to hear how much it hurt to leave you with Smoke Locke. Because that would be an excuse. I guess you also don't need to hear how happy I was that you followed us to the boat anyway.

If this makes you not want to talk to me anymore, I don't know if I can take that, but I guess I will have to.

Still your friend,

Hurley

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Dear Hurley,

Oh my god, Hurley, no, of course I want to talk to you. You did what you thought was right, both times. And despite everything, I never blamed you for any of it, or was sorry for one minute that I tagged along with you to the Barracks. So don't even think it.

Today, Jill brought five chickens to the kitchen. From inside their wicker baskets they made chirpy, worried clucks. She pulled one out, tucked it under her arm and asked me flat out if I had ever killed anything.

The pit of my stomach got all cold and sick. 'Not chickens,' I said.

As she trussed the chicken up, she talked about killing. Jill speaks in this flat, emotionless voice but you know she means business, like you'd best pay attention.

When the hen twisted around, trying to get free, Jill covered its head with her hand. 'It's important not to be in a hurry,' she said. 'It will calm down in a minute.'

The thing with killing, Jill went on, is that it can only be done for the most serious reasons, like preserving your own life, or the life of your child or someone else in your care. (I am not getting her exact words, this is just the sense.) While some people think that eating meat is always wrong, Jill thinks it is allowed if you do it properly. And she would show me how.

The chicken had quieted down by now, so she positioned the blade against its neck and said, 'Death feeds life, and life feeds death.' She then drew the knife so fast it looked like a silver flash. As the blood ran into a basin, she held the chicken's body gently, saying 'Shhh, shhh,' as if lulling it to sleep.

Eventually the bird stopped twitching and the blood slowed to a trickle. It didn't affect me as badly as I thought, not like when one of the men I killed looked me straight in the eye as he died. That was far worse than the ones I just shot through the trees.

Jill said that she liked to wait for the chicken's spirit to depart before starting on the next one. That took longer, of course, but it was more respectful. She killed two more as I watched.

She handed the next bird to me, a fat speckled Plymouth hen, older and placid. I stroked her feathers for a bit as she nestled in my arms. It was clear she was used to being handled by people.

Jill said, 'Killing should never be done in anger or fear.'

'I'm not afraid,' I told her, thinking of my terror and rage when I killed those Others. 'I'm just saying good-bye.'

'Tell her that to her before you kill her,' Jill said. 'Also, you might apologise in advance, in case your stroke is bad. But I don't think it will be.'

I told the hen that I would make it fast, and thanked her for all the eggs she had given, as well as for the meat. Then I almost couldn't do it. My hand started to shake and I knew that if I cut her now, I'd bollocks it up.

Jill's voice was the voice of the judge I'd never had. 'Tell the others that you're sorry, too.'

'I'm sorry,' I whispered. Because I really was.

'How many were there?'

'Five, all men.'

'You thought you were doing the right thing,' Jill said.

Something inside me snapped loose like a rubber band. I sliced across the hen's neck as fast as I could, and it was surprising how gristly the neck was. When blood spurted onto my apron, I aimed the cut downwards.

After I finished off the fifth and last bird, Jill said that I had done it like a pro. While we plucked and cleaned them, I got the feeling that all the work with Dr Stillman was just leading up to this. The real work started here today.

I hope that wasn't too grisly,

Claire

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Dear Claire,

You are an awesome story teller. I can tell ghost tales around the camp fire or jokes, but this I could see in my head. Ben knows Jill and says she is really hard core. In a good way.

I get why you were upset. If I think about the guy I ran over with the van, I pray for him. It was worse for you because you were being tricked and lied to. It is probably better that it upsets you than if you didn't feel anything at all. Sometimes those memories don't feel very good. I know. It can be like that right before a breakthrough.

If blood bothered me now I would never eat any meat, because we butcher right at the gazebo and I help too. At first the guts freaked me out, but I got used to them.

Rose and Bernard want me to say hi. So hi! They were glad to hear news of you, I hope you didn't mind me telling them you were settling in. Instead of moving to the Barracks, they still live down by the ocean, in this big wooden house with all this blue glass. I wish you could see it. Rose still gives Ben the stink eye but she has started inviting him to dinner now, along with me. Baby steps.

You won't believe this, but we found some Temple people who got away through the tunnels. And this is really awesome: you know how Rose and Bernard survived the flaming arrows? Well, there are some crash survivors who did, too. During That Seventies Show they went to live on the north coast, away from Dharma and the Others. When everybody zapped back to the future so did they.

Both the beach and Temple people had some trust issues with Ben at first, but now everybody mostly gets along.

Sullivan and a couple of Temple dudes built a shelter on the mountain top. Some nights I stay up there even when I don't have phone calls to make. The stars are so bright they cast shadows. Ben says the island is probably close to the same lateral or something as Los Angeles. Lateral-tude? Whatever. It means that you and I could maybe see some of the same stars when we look up.

Be good to yourself, Claire.

Hurley

( _continued_ )


	10. Midsummer's Eve (Part 1)

**Chapter 10: Midsummer's Eve (Part 1)**

 **(A/N: This story just took a low-key Sawyer/Kate turn, much to my surprise.)**

The year rotated like a great wheel, matching the movements of the one deep within the Island, and no one could have said which turned which. As the gears of time ground out the days and months, Aaron when asked his age held up four fingers instead of three. Claire threw away her drawings of black clouds punctuated with glaring red eyes, and instead covered her room's walls with sketches of her son, of Kate, and even a few of Hugo.

Old Joe and Cobbie had companions in the pasture now, as Kate had started to take in horses for boarding. She rode her charges up and down the narrow mountain trails, and when spring mudslides kept the vet from the neighbor's ranch, she helped a mare give birth. For the first time since Jack's death, more warmth ran through Kate's veins than ice, as the wobbly foal nuzzled the exhausted mare and drank. Her own mother made it through another year, although no one expected her to. It was Sam who flew to Los Angeles for the holidays. Sam and Kate agreed to let Diane still think that Aaron was her grandson, given her bed-ridden and sometimes not-lucid state.

The Shephard Foundation bought the Island from Mittelos, after a certificate of ownership conveniently turned up in the Portland corporate office. Crews from the neighboring Kingdom of Tonga repaired the damaged Hydra Island airstrip, and now HYI was duly and officially registered with the IATA, appearing on charts as "Strictly private. No access except in emergencies." To celebrate Hugo's ownership, Ben had the big oak desk moved from his Hydra Island office to Hugo's house in the Barracks. It mostly gathered dust, except when Hugo covered it with one of the 1500-piece jigsaw puzzles he liked to work on with Cindy, Emma and Zack. On one corner sat a framed self-portrait, sketched by Claire.

Cassidy couldn't hang up on Sawyer anymore, because the law firm of Agostino and Norton delivered their thick manila envelopes to her attorneys via certified mail. Cassidy could hang up on Kate, however, and did, on that day when Kate asked her what would be wrong with Clementine knowing who her father was, or even being allowed to see him once in awhile.

So the year circled the axis of time as it moved through spring to another melted-gold Southern California summer. It was three weeks before Midsummer when Claire suggested they throw a party.

* * *

After sundown, the early June heat quickly faded. Aaron was settled in bed; Carole watched a show in her room, and Kate had just poured some iced chamomile tea. She was ready to end the day after a long evening of making party arrangements, until Claire dropped her bombshell.

Kate couldn't believe her ears. "You want to invite who?"

"Like I said. I want to invite Sawyer to our midsummer's-eve party."

"I don't think so."

"What? Why not?"

"It's just that... I don't know. It's too soon—"

Claire charged forward anyway. "So you can yak about him with Cassidy for hours, but we can't invite him?"

There was no reason for Kate to feel caught out, yet she did. "I haven't talked to Cassidy in weeks."

"And why is that?"

Kate turned away, trying to hide embarrassment. "You know she was already mad at me, but the last straw was when I happened to mention one of Sawyer's letters. She didn't take it well."

That was an understatement, Kate thought. It's not like the letter had even been addressed to Kate personally; Sawyer always wrote, "The Malibu Springs Hen Party" on the envelope, as if daring the post office to return it to sender. Inside, the salutation read, "Three mountain-goat gals and a kid." Also, Sawyer had given them an open invitation to follow the old-time custom of sharing letters from faraway kin with the whole family.

None of that mattered one whit to Cassidy. In a fit of jealous pique, she'd cut Kate off. "She's blocked me, too," Kate added.

"Her loss, I'd say." Claire strode over to Kate, arms crossed in defiance. "Look, Kate, he was my friend as well as yours. He even pulled me out of the rubble of my house, after you'd left the Barracks to be with Jack—"

It felt like a slap, and already irritated, Kate hit back. "You knew what Locke was. You could have left, too."

Blue fire flashed in Claire's eyes, but her tone stayed calm. "Maybe I would have, given the chance. Instead, you snuck off at dawn. You knew what Locke was, too, yet you left the baby and me with him. At least Sawyer tried to get us to Jack."

Sudden hot tears stung Kate's eyes. When a baffled, frantic Sawyer had broken through the dappled jungle shadows with Aaron in arms, Kate had been convinced that Claire was dead. The first time Claire had disappeared, Aaron had been inside his mother, and thus safe, fed, warm. But the rooting, squirming baby in Sawyer's arms was going to start howling for food within the hour. Suddenly the rescue clock started ticking very, very quickly. Getting Aaron to the freighter was the first order of business.

Hurley hadn't thought Claire was dead, though. Instead, he asked Jack if they could go back and get her, instead of leaving on the freighter, and Jack had said yes.

Until the Island had disappeared.

Claire didn't look mad, though, just stoic and calm. What's done is done, Kate thought. Time to change the subject. "Portland to LA is a long way to come for a party."

"Herarat Airlines will fly him down. Anyway, he has to be here for some legal thing... a deposit?"

"Deposition."

"And then he's flying on to Albuquerque, to talk to the lawyers there." Claire went on, seemingly unruffled by Kate's terse responses. "I've been thinking about him, a lot. Don't pull that face; you know what I mean. You lost your f _iancé_ last year, and I lost my brother. Not that he was much of one, though it wasn't his fault. Still, I gained another brother in Sawyer. I've never pretended otherwise. And it's not like he's just writing to me, exclusively. That you don't want to read his letters is your choice, and of course I respect that."

"There's a lot of blood under that bridge," Kate said in a low voice.

"You saw how he acted when we were waiting in Tonga, to get into the United States. How broken up he was. He doesn't see the world in the same way since losing Juliet. Anyway, you yourself once said that Sawyer was like an old tom cat: tough and grizzled on the outside, tender on the underbelly, and he didn't want anyone to know it."

Kate knew full well how soft he could be, and didn't want to. Anyway, that was all gone, dead, past. Dead as the rock inside her chest that used to be a heart.

Claire delivered the _coup de grace_. "If anyone had reason to hate Sawyer, it was Hurley. But he doesn't, not at all."

Kate held her hand up. "Stop. Just stop." She knew what was coming next, and wasn't having any of it. Claire's face read as plain as a billboard on the 405; Kate didn't need to be a psychic to hear the unspoken plea.

Too late, because Claire said it anyway. "And Hurley would love to see him."

"He's already seen him in Portland. Twice." Kate hated how snappish she sounded. She turned away, hoping against hope that if Claire couldn't see her face, she wouldn't be able to read her thoughts, couldn't see that her fragile equilibrium would topple like a house of cards in a random breeze. Mostly because Sawyer had been right there beside her to see it all, especially Jack's downfall. "Do what you want," Kate said, full of dismissal.

Claire wasn't taking that for the whole answer, though. "What happened between you and Sawyer when you were running around together on the island, at the end there? I mean, to put you in this _mood_ whenever his name comes up. Was he cruel to you or something?"

Cautiously Kate ventured, "What do you know about Jack's last days?"

Claire's eyes narrowed. "What you and Hurley told me. You shot that... thing... and Jack kicked him off the cliff. But Jack was mortally stabbed, and bled to death after you and Sawyer left the Island."

"I don't mean that. What came before."

"Before?"

She doesn't know, Kate thought. How could she? First she was with the Locke-thing all the time, and then we left her like a piece of abandoned luggage. Now, after all this time, all this grief, not none of us – not Sawyer, not me, not even Hurley – have told her how it came to be. "Let me pour you another glass of tea," Kate said with a heavy sigh. "Have a seat, because this is going to take awhile."

* * *

The next morning, Jill and Claire headed down to Thousand Oaks to order party supplies. On the way down, Claire texted Sawyer about coming to LA. As she and Jill made the rounds from Simon's Butcher Shop (75 pound pig for roasting) to the caterer's and wine store, Claire's thoughts alternated between aghast surprise at all the food and preparations, and thoughts of her brother's last days on earth.

Jill rattled on how they wouldn't have to buy paper plates or cups, as Malibu Springs was an old summer camp, full of tin camping plates, cups and silverware all packed in storage. After leaving the music store where Jill paid a deposit for some friends of hers, a trio of musicians, Claire half-listened as she stared out the window.

The surface street traffic, the dusty palms and sun-drenched bougainvillea all blurred by as Claire tried to imagine how Jack had put up his hand at that fireside meeting and volunteered. How even Sawyer seemed okay with it, although Kate was furious and hurt. How Hurley had muttered to Kate how glad he was that he wasn't in that particular hot seat, yet look where he wound up.

By the time Jill and Claire were done with their shopping, Sawyer still hadn't texted back. Claire put the phone away, vaguely hurt. She told herself that he was busy: he had his job with Herarat operations, not to mention the endless legal paperwork he needed to fill out before he had even a hope of seeing his daughter Clementine.

"What's the deal?" Jill said, navigating the twisty roads towards Malibu in between side-eyeing Claire. "It's not like you're sweet on him or anything."

Claire rolled her eyes. "Very funny. And before you get started, Kate isn't, either."

"'Course she's not," Jill said in a noncommittal voice.

A few seconds later, the phone rang. Claire was so surprised, she almost dropped it.

"Well, ain't it my lucky day, gettin' paged by Goldilocks," came Sawyer's funny, familiar drawl. "How're the three bears?"

Across the front seat, Claire glimpsed Jill's faint smile. A little confused, she said, "Three bears?"

"What, you never told Aaron that story? Hell, I'll give you a hint. Aaron's the baby."

"If I'm Goldilocks, that makes Kate Mama Bear, right?"

"Two outta three ain't bad. Keep goin'."

She hesitated an instant, stopped by the blush which swept from neck to cheek. As they exchanged pleasantries, the heat faded from her cheeks, but Hugo as "Papa Bear" refused to fade from her mind. Eventually Sawyer said, "So what you thinking, Goldie?"

They joked around a bit before Claire got to the invitation part, and after Sawyer's immediate "Yes," she finished with, "You're going to love the place. There's lot's of room, and the cottages are comfortable for a ranch."

He said in a laughing voice, "Just so long's I don't have to bunk with Hugo."

"Why should you? This place was built for about twenty guests, even more if they were kids." Then it hit her. Back in the Barracks, Hurley and Sawyer had shared a house, before everything had blown up in their faces. Literally, in her case.

Sawyer laughed outright. "Just tell him I said not to wear so much cologne this time, or else he'll smell like a polecat."

She sputtered for a second and didn't know what to say. Back then, when she and Hurley had made Christmas dinner in the Barracks, he really had overdone it on the cologne.

"It didn't bother me," she finally choked out, trying to ignore how Jill was shaking with silent laughter. "It was sweet."

:*:*:*:*:*:

The day before Midsummer's Eve, Claire was hanging paper lanterns on the front porch of the Malibu Springs recreation room, when Sawyer peeled into the circle driveway, gravel spraying under the tires of his beautifully restored Ford Mustang. He parked under the biggest and shadiest oak tree, his lion-like hair blowing around as he looked over the place with a few brief glances.

Scanning for Kate, too, Claire thought, as disappointment flickered across his face for an instant.

He swept Claire up in a tough, leathery hug. "You got a nice spread here, Goldilocks. Got a beer to wash the desert dust from a man's throat?"

As she uncapped two cold ones, he joked, "Don't you look like Laura Ingalls, fresh off the farm and all growed up."

Under the broad, shady porch, Claire curled up in an Adirondack chair, and motioned Sawyer to sit as well. "Kate'll be by on her way back from the stables. We're on her path."

He turned a little pink. "So, Miss Claire, you've got the shine, too, like Sir Hugo? I'd best not play poker with either of you."

Claire laughed, thinking that someone didn't need to read minds to know what was on his. "She's probably out for a ride. She's not quite satisfied with the horses, Cobbie especially. She wishes he had more spirit."

"Some gals just don't take to slow-and-steady. But some'd be a lot happier if they did."

What was it with Sawyer, that he could drill right down into one's unspoken thoughts? As they chatted, Claire pinked up again when he told her how gorgeous she looked. "A welcome change," he added.

"You're just saying that because when you saw me last, I was indistinguishable from a half-dead bush cat."

"Naw, it wasn't that. Back then, back before..." and his voice trailed off.

It was the same with all of them, Claire thought. Whenever someone said, Before, or Back when, it all meant the same thing: back when they had first arrived on the island, after the Oceanic crash.

Sawyer said it with the same wistful tone. "Back then, you were pretty as a picture. Didn't matter none that you were big as a house with Aaron, 'cause you were still like a china doll. Tough, too, anyone could see that. Now, Claire, now you got the beauty of a woman grown."

"You don't need to talk me up. I mean, we've seen each other at our worst."

"That's what I like, a woman who has no idea how fetching she is." As if that reminded him of something, he added, "Sir Hugo's showin' up tomorrow, right?"

Claire nodded yes, reining in wild anticipation with sober, practical arguments which, in her mind's ear, sounded just like her mother. As she pondered, Jill's voice drifted from the kitchen, where she was showing some of the party helpers how to set up for the next day's dinner, the women's voices echoing sometimes in Spanish, then in English. Kate still hadn't come up that shady path from the stables, and Claire couldn't bear to watch Sawyer's pathward glances any longer. "Look, let me show you around the place, starting with your cabin."

After he dropped off his one battered duffel bag, she tried to drag out the walk as long as possible. "So, Frank is flying for Mittelos, but what's Miles up to?"

Sawyer explained that Richard had managed to find something for Miles after all, in St. Louis.

"I don't even know where that is," Claire remarked.

"Big insurance capitol. They got that, the world's biggest croquet wicket, and not much else."

At Claire's blank stare, Sawyer went on. Apparently Mittlelos was branching out as a corporation, and last year bought a failing insurance company in St. Louis. Miles was working in something called casualty analysis. If someone died in a car crash, Miles went to the morgue to investigate and determine what really happened. That helped the company decide whether they had to pay out or not, or who to sue. Of course, Miles' contributions could never be brought up in court.

Sawyer finished the last of his beer, then jammed the empty into his back pocket. "You know what they say about treasure, Mamacita. Not enough to get a shovel. You also gotta know where to dig."

"It sounds so grim, though."

"Don't seem to bother Miles none. Using his gift gives him a charge, makes him happy. Even if he don't always like what he hears, it's not like he's got to look the grieving parents in the eye and tell them that their kid crashed into a bridge abutment because he was flying high on coke, or how some couple got into such a bad argument about who was cheating on who that they ran off the road. Miles ain't the one to deliver the bad news. He's just got to find out what happened." Sawyer paused, then added, "Also, Miles and me, we need a vacation from each other."

Claire took this to mean that Sawyer needed a vacation, too. "You can stay here as long as you like."

He thanked her in that pretty way of his, but she knew that he wouldn't stay if Kate didn't want him to. Anyway, there was that trip to Albuquerque. Then, with perfect timing, Kate came riding up on Cobbie, sweat on his dark-brown flanks, winded because Kate pushed him faster than he wanted to go.

When Kate saw Sawyer sitting on the paddock fence, chewing a piece of long grass, she got that look which Claire knew well, the one which said that she didn't like to be surprised. Kate was the one who liked to sneak up on you in the woods, rather than the other way around. So if someone got the drop on her, annoyance and perplexity popped out in her expression before she could tuck them back in.

After Kate dismounted, Sawyer gave her a kiss in greeting. Even though it was just on the cheek, he lingered there, and Kate's closed-eyed expression gave Claire a little twitch of envy. It had been a long time since she had been kissed, and while she might hope for the future, hope didn't pay the mortgage, as the old ranchers of the outback used to say.

Later, as the slanted evening sun filtered through the ancient oaks, Kate and Sawyer got into the Mustang, heading down to a roadhouse on Mulholland Highway, where the bikers stopped for a little detour on their travels through the mountains.

"Don't expect us for supper," Kate said as she waved.

As they drove off, Claire thought that it looked like a nice kiss. She hoped Kate had appreciated it.

( _continued_ )


End file.
